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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: 4284
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 5: Sleepover
by Dr Squidlove
Previously, in chapter 4, Beer:
After a tough case, Elliot invited Toby out for a beer. Toby figured he could resist a drink while he ogled Elliot for an evening, but he failed spectacularly. The fail got bigger when he woke the next morning, hungover, to his disappointed mother and daughter.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Toby hadn't called, so a week after their night of embarrassing drunken sex talk, Elliot did. "I don't blame you if you're avoiding me."
"Elliot! No. No, I'm not avoiding you." He sounded panicked.
"That was a joke. You free tonight?"
"Tonight? I... Yes! That would be great. Holly's at a sleepover. Just.. could we maybe do food, this time?"
Elliot smiled. "That's a damned good idea." Elliot was still cringing at how much he'd drunk that night. Thank god Toby had been in no position to judge. "I'll be in your area around six-thirty. You can pick anywhere except vegetarian or sushi." He was still smiling as he put the phone down and caught Munch's raised eyebrow. "I've got three potential licence plates. What've you got?"
"Frostbite from pounding through the snow in these shoes."
It should've been weird how much Elliot was looking forward to dinner, but he was starting to realise how much he needed a friend who didn't sit at one of these desks, and wasn't allocated to Kathy in the divorce. Somebody to share a drink and talk about all the shit he couldn't talk to Liv about. Though maybe they could cut back on discussing Toby's sex life.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The wind blew Elliot through the door into a burst of toasty heat, and with his first breath his mouth started watering at the scent of slow-cooked pork and barbecue sauce. Toby had taken the no-vegetarian request seriously. Perfect February food.
He was still peeling off his gloves and hat as he slid into the booth opposite Toby. "If it tastes half as good as it smells in here..."
Toby gestured towards the bread basket and smiled. "And free cornbread."
Elliot slathered on butter and took a bite. It tasted exactly as good as it smelled.
The waitress stopped by and Elliot ordered a beer. "Is the pulled pork good?"
"Everything's good, honey."
"It's good," said Toby. "That's what I'll have. And a sparkling water will be fine."
They pretended last week's over-sharing didn't happen, and moved on with normal things. It sounded like Toby spent a lot of time reading, seemed to be on a Russian history kick.
"Cheerful."
"It makes me feel better about my life."
"At least you didn't spend twenty years in a Siberian gulag?"
He gave a crooked smile. "Something like that."
They ended up talking about the battle of Stalingrad and old war movies and Steve McQueen versus Paul Newman, just shooting the breeze while eating the best pulled pork Elliot had tasted since he was a kid. He wiped his mouth and gave his stomach a rub. "If I lived near this place, all the weights in the world couldn't save me."
The corner of Toby's mouth lifted. "You don't look like you have any trouble keeping fit."
Elliot blinked, and Toby's eyes dropped. Elliot put his hands back on the table, and told himself not to be an idiot. He was being teased. And if Toby wanted to look, what did it matter? Elliot wasn't insecure. "I would if people kept putting baskets of cornbread in front of me."
Toby broke off a small piece from the basket. "I should try my hand at making it." His phone rang, some pop song that Elliot would bet Holly put on it, and he'd fished it out before the first bar was done but he held it in his hand. "Sorry, I have to..."
Elliot waved him off. He was the last person in the world who could complain about phone calls interrupting dinner.
Toby answered. "Hi, sweetheart." His face fell, and he rubbed his face as they talked.
It sounded like Holly was ready to come home from that sleepover. Immediately. Toby buried his head in his hand and gently asked what the other kids were up to, talked her down, persuaded her to give it another try with a promise that if she called again he'd come straight over.
He hung up and hesitated, and Elliot waved off his apologetic look. "Do what you gotta do."
He dialled. "Hey Mel, it's Toby. Yeah, she called. I don't think it's her kind of movie. Maybe if you invite her down to help in the kitchen or something it will give her an out, distract her for-" He nodded. "Thanks, Mel." He put the phone down. "Military invasions have been carried out with less coordination."
"She doesn't like sleepovers? All of mine love any excuse to get out of our house."
Toby looked down and swallowed, then lifted his head. "It's the first time she's slept away from family since the kidnap. Her therapist said it would be good for her. Didn't seem to care if it was good for me." He gave a wry smile. "Did I tell you how glad I was when you called tonight?"
Elliot was impressed that Toby was sitting here. If Dickie or Lizzie had been through what Holly had been through, Elliot would have been in his car outside that house, would have broken down the door the second they called. "How's she doing?"
"Remarkably well, considering all she's been through. This age, though... I can explain things to the adults in her life, but I have to set her loose in a sea of insensitive pre-teens who want to watch scary movies."
"Do her friends know what happened to her?"
"Most of it. These are the same kids she was at school with when she was taken, and my prison stint is public knowledge, so she doesn't have a lot of secrets. In September, though... She's starting middle school, and it's going to be a sea of strangers."
Elliot could imagine. There probably weren't too many kids in Holly's circle whose parents had done time. Let alone the rest of it. "Maureen was with me when we came across a crime scene, once." It was one of Elliot's biggest regrets in all his years on the job. "Body set alight. She had nightmares for a month." She still found an excuse to leave the room if there was a burning building on the TV.
"She's your oldest."
"Yeah. She's started talking about doing her science post-grad in Boston." Post-grad. When the hell did that happen?
"Harvard? I went to Harvard. It's a good school."
In Elliot's dreams. "BU. Which is still three and a half hours away."
"Closer than Stanford."
"Don't even joke about it." Elliot remembered that was about as far away Toby's nine year-old lived. No way in hell.
"You think any of yours will follow you into the force?"
"Nooooo." Thank god. "I think Kathy would kill me."
Toby looked startled. "Kathy?"
"My wife. Ex-wife." He was going to have to get used to calling her that.
"Huh."
They talked about their kids a while, until the food was gone and Elliot was fit to burst, but he didn't want to go home yet. Toby didn't seem motivated to head home, either. "You want to grab a beer?"
"I, uh..." Toby chewed his lip, looking downright scared for a moment, but he swallowed it down. "I'm not... I need to stay away from bars."
Because he hooked up in bathrooms? Elliot was reasonably sure he hadn't done that when they went for drinks last week. He hadn't been gone that long.
"I'm an alcoholic."
"We were at a bar last... Wait... You're an alcoholic?" Toby had been drunk when he killed that girl. Elliot felt like a heel. "Why didn't you tell me?" Toby looked awkward, and Elliot kicked himself. Why would he want to announce it to someone he barely knew? Elliot looked at his second beer of the night, remembered Toby had been drinking water. "I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry. You didn't make me an alcoholic."
"You're trying to get sober?" Not doing a great job of it, judging by last weekend. Elliot felt himself pulling back.
He sighed. "I was sober for seven and a half years."
"What happened?"
Toby touched his glass of water, turned it around, pushed it away. "You wanted to go for a beer. I wanted to see you. Didn't want you to think I was a more of a loser than you already knew."
"You broke seven years of sobriety just because I asked you out to a bar?"
"No. I drank because I'm an alcoholic."
It may have been true, but it didn't make Elliot feel any better. He should have known. Maybe Toby had even said it, back in one of the interviews. "Shit, Toby. I don't make a habit of dragging alcoholics to bars. Next time, how about you suggest going out for ice cream instead?"
Toby smiled. "Ice cream? Yeah, that's real manly."
"Screw you, I love ice cream."
That got a genuine laugh, the first Elliot had seen. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"Not being a dick about it."
"You're not the only alcoholic I know." The only one Elliot had ever enabled, maybe. "You can't be drinking, Toby. You're all Holly's got."
"I know. Mother keeps reminding me. She... found out." Elliot wondered what stood in that pause. He was sure it hadn't gone down well. "She's been calling me every second day to check on me."
"Good for her."
"I know. It was just that night, and I've put myself back in counselling."
"Your daughter's more important than seeing me."
"She is. But having a friend is... I've really enjoyed talking to you."
"Yeah, me too." Elliot cringed at how gay that sounded. He wasn't going to tell him how Munch and Cragen had stared when he bounced out of the station at five-thirty today.
"So, food from now on."
"Or ice cream."
"Or ice cream," Toby agreed.
"Sounds good to me." It sounded like this was going to happen more often. He wasn't happy to find out Toby was an off-the-wagon alcoholic, but he deserved a chance. Elliot could stick around, as long as Toby could stay sober.
"I can't fit ice cream in after all this, but if you're dreading going home like I am, there's a nice view from the park."
It sounded a hell of a lot better than home. "Sure."
The wind had died down, and it was close enough to walk. The sidewalk was clear, but grey snow was piled up in gutters and along the fronts of the brownstones. When they reached the shoreline Elliot tugged his beanie over his head, glad he had his heavy coat. They strolled to the end of the pier to stare across the Hudson at the lights of the Jersey skyline. A little romantic for Elliot's comfort - the couple hugging beside them seemed to think so - but Toby didn't notice so Elliot told himself not to be so uptight. "Holly never called back. Guess she's okay."
"I hope so."
"My lot always loved having friends over. Maureen and Lizzie and Dickie were happy having one stay, but in Kathleen's tween years I'd stumble home from work to find five girls giggling in the kitchen, eating cold pizza or making popcorn. It was kinda nice." When it was late, he'd peek in to see them crammed on the floor of the basement in their sleeping bags: sometimes all passed out, sometimes a last couple of hold-outs, quietly talking about whatever it was girls talked about after midnight, going all silent and wide-eyed at his intrusion. "Guess I'm not going to get to do that with Lizzie." There weren't going to be any sleepovers in his cramped apartment. "I lost so much of their lives to the job, now I don't see them at home. Feels like they just keep getting further away."
"So fix it." He sounded like Kathy.
"It's not that simple."
Toby laughed. "Do you really want to play one-upmanship on parental absence with me?" That shut Elliot up. Toby continued, and Elliot didn't know how he sounded so calm. "Do you want to punish yourself, or do you want to fix it? Because you can't do both at the same time. I wreaked a trail of destruction through my whole family, but Holly's celebrating her friend's birthday, bundled up in a sleeping bag and eating cake." He nodded towards the skyline, the Staten Island Ferry pushing by. "With you or without you, it just keeps rolling along."
"Not everything is your fault."
"It was." Toby shrugged off his look. "It's not a guilt complex. All of the worst things that have happened to the people I care about, every one can be traced back to the day I got behind the wheel drunk off my ass."
Elliot turned to lean back against the railing, stared at the white mist of his breath."I guess I don't know much about your story." Olivia had been the one who skimmed Toby's file during the Markstrom case, and Elliot hadn't been all that interested at the time. He hadn't anticipated late night heart-to-hearts on the pier.
"Don't be tempted to read my file, all right?"
"Of course not." Maybe Toby was some kind of mind reader. Elliot chased back for where the thread of the conversation had gone wrong. "Does Holly ever have friends over?"
"She doesn't have many friends. None with parents who want their daughters to sleep over with a single father ex-con." It came out too quiet, like it hurt. "She has her friends over at my mother's."
Elliot swallowed. Lizzie wouldn't dare to ask to stay with some guy who'd been in prison. Even now, knowing Toby a little - knowing some of the sordid details - he'd hesitate to let Lizzie sleep over with Holly.
Toby leaned on his elbows on the railing. "She had a brother."
Now Elliot looked at Toby: in the shadows of the lamplight he could see his jaw was clenched as he stared across the water. "Harry?"
"Gary. They were kidnapped together."
Gary never made it home. "Hell." There was that twisting knife Elliot felt every time he faced the parents of a dead child. But this time he knew Toby, had seen how close he was to his daughter, and the knife just kept on going. He was grateful for the dark. "Did they find him?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry for your loss." He hated those words, but in twenty years, he'd never found anything better. "Did they get the guy?" If they didn't, Elliot was heading back to the house tonight to get his hands on the file.
"He got off on a technicality."
Fucking lawyers.
Toby gave a shrug. "He's dead. He must have got tangled up with the mob - they hit him a few months later."
"How old was Gary?"
"Eight. Two years older than Holly. He'd be thirteen, now."
Dickie's age. "Do you want to talk about him?"
Toby straightened, surprised by the question. He curled his gloved hands around the rail. "No. It just feels like a shameful secret when I don't mention him."
They fell quiet. They'd become friends because Elliot was curious about how Toby held it together after everything that had happened to him. Elliot hadn't known the half of it. It was a miracle Toby only struggled with alcohol.
Toby pulled his phone out of his pocket, checked a message. "Mel says they've all fallen asleep."
The wind picked up and Elliot shuddered, lifted his collar. "Come on." He started back towards shore, Toby falling in beside him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It was late when Elliot drove Toby home. He stayed in his car, but he didn't drive away until Toby had let himself into the building and climbed the stairs out of sight. Elliot had plenty of fears for his own family, but Toby beat them all. One dead, one traumatised, one a stranger. No mother.
Elliot checked his watch. Too late for the twins, and Kathleen wouldn't want to hear from him. Maureen would be up.
"Dad, is everything okay?"
"Yeah, fine. It's not too late to call, is it?"
"No, but you don't call this late. What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I just wanted to see how you're doing."
"Did something happen at work?"
Elliot tipped his head back on the head rest. "Am I that bad at keeping up with you?"
He heard her sigh. "No. It's just almost eleven. My friends call me this late. You and mom never do unless somebody's in hospital. Usually you."
"I'm fine. Perfect health, I promise. I was just talking about you with a friend, and I realised I hadn't seen you in a couple of weeks."
"You have a friend?"
"Yes, I went out and found myself a friend since we last spoke. That's how long it's been. So could we maybe organise a lunch, or a coffee or something?"
"Sure, Dad." He could hear her grinning. It helped.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Toby wondered if Elliot waited for him to go inside just to be sure he wasn't doubling back to the package store. He didn't need to worry: Toby was feeling stronger today. Good food and decent conversation beat the hell out of staring at a cold beer, even when that perfect resemblance was beginning to break down.
Toby had forgotten the smell of Chris. Elliot had brought it back by being wrong. Elliot looked right and sometimes he sounded right but he smelled like pressed clothes and some unfamiliar aftershave. Chris had smelled like prison soap and fresh sweat, like someone had bottled Clint Eastwood and James Dean and an extra quart of testosterone.
Toby hung up his coat and unwound his scarf. Out on the pier, Elliot bundled against the cold so Toby couldn't see him or smell him, Toby hadn't been thinking so much of Chris at all.
The empty apartment felt like sensory deprivation. Like those first weeks of freedom in his mother's house, where solid walls and heavy furnishings swallowed all the sounds of life. She'd had doors that closed, lights that switched off to leave you in total darkness. Who would have guessed that the creak of your murderer-roommate shifting in the bed below you could be a comfort?
Toby wandered around the apartment picking up Holly's things and putting them down again. Fix it, he'd told Elliot. Chris would have told Toby to fix things with Harry. They're your blood, Toby.
Toby checked the time. Not late in San Diego. He sat on the couch and pulled up his call list, took a slow deep breath before hitting call. Now he felt the craving for a martini. Harry was the only person he could call who wouldn't wonder if he'd been drinking.
"Hello?"
"Hi Marta. It's Toby. How are you?"
"I'm well, Toby, how are you?"
"Fine. How is the merger going?" Toby wanted to give Harry a cell phone so he could call him any time, without making polite conversation with Marta or Jonah first, but Marta and Jonah thought Harry was too young for his own cell phone.
"Coming along. How's Holly?"
"At a sleepover. It's pretty quiet here, so I was hoping..."
"You want to talk to Harrison? He's up here somewhere. Harrison!"
Toby could hear her climbing the stairs. "How is he?"
"Great. He had a solo in the school choir on Monday night. You should have heard him, Toby."
Toby's next breath went down sideways. He'd never heard Harry sing. He'd never been to any of his concerts, or his windsailing competitions, or a parent-teacher conference.
"Harrison, it's your father."
The phone clunked as it was passed over, and then Harry's clear voice came down the line. "Hi Dad."
"Hey, Harry. What are you up to?"
"Making a poster."
"For school?"
"Yeah."
"What's it about?"
"We had to choose a mammal. I picked echidnas."
"They're Australian, right?"
"Yeah. They lay eggs." He sounded like he was only half paying attention, concentrating on his poster as they talked.
"Marta said you were great in the choir on Monday."
"I was okay."
"I wish I could have heard you."
"It was nothing special."
"Everything you do is special, Harry. Maybe next time you could ask your Nan to record it for me."
"Okay."
Toby pulled his legs under him. "So what else have you been doing? Have you been hanging out with Aaron and Phil?"
Toby dragged the conversation on a little longer, until he'd run out of things to ask or tell. Harry didn't seem bothered when he finally said goodbye.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Elliot's stomach growled when he took his pulled pork sandwich out of the microwave and took it back to his desk.
Finn sniffed as he walked past. "Damn that smells good. You got a spare?"
"Dinner leftovers. Found this place in Red Hook; their cornbread'll change your whole outlook on the world."
"Brooklyn? Did you have a hot date?"
Elliot lifted his head, saw half the squad room looking at him. "Uh. No."
Especially Olivia. "You have been in a good mood today."
"Is that so unusual?" Nobody reacted except Olivia, who was brave enough to cock an eyebrow.
Munch leaned against the edge of Olivia's desk. "You did bounce out of here with an uncharacteristic promptness yesterday."
Elliot dumped his sandwich on its wrapper. "You've all been nagging me to have a social life, so I caught up with a friend."
Finn raised his hands. "We ain't been nagging you; just Olivia. I personally don't give a damn if you're getting laid or not."
"I'm not getting laid!"
Way too loud: now even the captain was standing in his office door, listening.
Elliot rubbed a hand through his hair. "If it's all right with all of you, I'm seeing Maureen after work tonight, so can we get this to bed so I can actually leave on time?"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Tonight Toby had found a spot in Soho that did chilli-chocolate ice cream to make good on their ice cream plan. Dinners - or late night snacks - had become an irregular weekly thing as the winter dragged on through February, whenever they could fit them between their kids and Elliot's job. Elliot dragged Toby to a place that did great souvlaki the day his divorce was finalised, and Toby invited Elliot out to Little Italy one evening when he found himself salivating in the window of the package store. When Toby craved a drink, he called his counsellor or he called Elliot. He was getting to know Elliot pretty well.
For some reason, Elliot seemed to like talking to Toby. From the stilted, stumbling attempts to articulate his feelings and the detached descriptions of his relationships, Toby suspected he didn't do it a lot. He felt cut off from his kids by divorce and their growing up, feared that his attempts to bring them back just pushed them away. Toby understood.
Toby swallowed, enjoying the warm-cold of the dessert. It felt strangely indulgent to be sitting in here eating ice cream, watching through the window as people hurried along the snowy sidewalk, huddled in their coats. "How do the others in your squad handle it? Work, their families?"
"We're all divorced. Except Liv, who never married. Saved herself some paperwork."
"Does she have family?"
Elliot sucked his spoon clean. "Nah. No father, mother died a few years back. Just the job."
"That must be hard."
"We don't talk about it much. But yeah." He stared out the window, playing with his spoon.
"Does it break some kind of sacred cop-partner trust to tell her you worry?"
Elliot gave him a sharp look. "Yeah. It does. You don't know how it is. I spend more time with Liv than I ever did with Kathy. We've seen each other through some bad days. There's not a lot of privacy left, so you hold on to what you can."
Toby wondered what it was like, balancing a relationship like that with a marriage. Gen had always paid attention to the female lawyers at his firm, seemed happier when he had a male assistant. It was never overt; there were never jealous accusations, but he noticed her noticing, and he'd picked his work stories carefully to ease her worries.
Elliot butted heads with a few of his colleagues, but he respected them. He craved his boss's approval like a father, and Toby suspected he got it more than he realised.
Every insight dragged him a little further from the man Toby was searching for, and every meal was a disappointment and a relief. Elliot's face was stolen from a ghost, but this wasn't Chris. Elliot didn't challenge him or infuriate him or terrify him like Chris had, didn't make his blood sing or his cock throb. Not that Toby could pretend he wouldn't like to fuck him, given half a chance. Toby could hear Chris sneer in the back of his mind, but Toby's cock wouldn't much care about the trivial differences. It was probably lucky Elliot was a super-hetero cop. It saved Toby from screwing this up.
Meanwhile, Elliot was slowly restoring Toby's faith in the world. Elliot cared about his family, his victims, noble ideas of justice, and he worked hard for all of it. Instead of Chris, Toby had found himself a new Said - and wouldn't Said appreciate that, his replacement stuffed in the body of an angry white cop? Elliot gave a damn, and that was a balm to Toby's soul after the selfish survival mentality of prison. He gave a damn about Toby. Somehow Toby had found himself a friend. And if he sometimes looked at Toby just the right way, or tensed his body and fisted his hands when he felt pushed into a corner, then that was more than okay with Toby.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
end chapter 5
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: 4284
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 5: Sleepover
by Dr Squidlove
Previously, in chapter 4, Beer:
After a tough case, Elliot invited Toby out for a beer. Toby figured he could resist a drink while he ogled Elliot for an evening, but he failed spectacularly. The fail got bigger when he woke the next morning, hungover, to his disappointed mother and daughter.
Toby hadn't called, so a week after their night of embarrassing drunken sex talk, Elliot did. "I don't blame you if you're avoiding me."
"Elliot! No. No, I'm not avoiding you." He sounded panicked.
"That was a joke. You free tonight?"
"Tonight? I... Yes! That would be great. Holly's at a sleepover. Just.. could we maybe do food, this time?"
Elliot smiled. "That's a damned good idea." Elliot was still cringing at how much he'd drunk that night. Thank god Toby had been in no position to judge. "I'll be in your area around six-thirty. You can pick anywhere except vegetarian or sushi." He was still smiling as he put the phone down and caught Munch's raised eyebrow. "I've got three potential licence plates. What've you got?"
"Frostbite from pounding through the snow in these shoes."
It should've been weird how much Elliot was looking forward to dinner, but he was starting to realise how much he needed a friend who didn't sit at one of these desks, and wasn't allocated to Kathy in the divorce. Somebody to share a drink and talk about all the shit he couldn't talk to Liv about. Though maybe they could cut back on discussing Toby's sex life.
The wind blew Elliot through the door into a burst of toasty heat, and with his first breath his mouth started watering at the scent of slow-cooked pork and barbecue sauce. Toby had taken the no-vegetarian request seriously. Perfect February food.
He was still peeling off his gloves and hat as he slid into the booth opposite Toby. "If it tastes half as good as it smells in here..."
Toby gestured towards the bread basket and smiled. "And free cornbread."
Elliot slathered on butter and took a bite. It tasted exactly as good as it smelled.
The waitress stopped by and Elliot ordered a beer. "Is the pulled pork good?"
"Everything's good, honey."
"It's good," said Toby. "That's what I'll have. And a sparkling water will be fine."
They pretended last week's over-sharing didn't happen, and moved on with normal things. It sounded like Toby spent a lot of time reading, seemed to be on a Russian history kick.
"Cheerful."
"It makes me feel better about my life."
"At least you didn't spend twenty years in a Siberian gulag?"
He gave a crooked smile. "Something like that."
They ended up talking about the battle of Stalingrad and old war movies and Steve McQueen versus Paul Newman, just shooting the breeze while eating the best pulled pork Elliot had tasted since he was a kid. He wiped his mouth and gave his stomach a rub. "If I lived near this place, all the weights in the world couldn't save me."
The corner of Toby's mouth lifted. "You don't look like you have any trouble keeping fit."
Elliot blinked, and Toby's eyes dropped. Elliot put his hands back on the table, and told himself not to be an idiot. He was being teased. And if Toby wanted to look, what did it matter? Elliot wasn't insecure. "I would if people kept putting baskets of cornbread in front of me."
Toby broke off a small piece from the basket. "I should try my hand at making it." His phone rang, some pop song that Elliot would bet Holly put on it, and he'd fished it out before the first bar was done but he held it in his hand. "Sorry, I have to..."
Elliot waved him off. He was the last person in the world who could complain about phone calls interrupting dinner.
Toby answered. "Hi, sweetheart." His face fell, and he rubbed his face as they talked.
It sounded like Holly was ready to come home from that sleepover. Immediately. Toby buried his head in his hand and gently asked what the other kids were up to, talked her down, persuaded her to give it another try with a promise that if she called again he'd come straight over.
He hung up and hesitated, and Elliot waved off his apologetic look. "Do what you gotta do."
He dialled. "Hey Mel, it's Toby. Yeah, she called. I don't think it's her kind of movie. Maybe if you invite her down to help in the kitchen or something it will give her an out, distract her for-" He nodded. "Thanks, Mel." He put the phone down. "Military invasions have been carried out with less coordination."
"She doesn't like sleepovers? All of mine love any excuse to get out of our house."
Toby looked down and swallowed, then lifted his head. "It's the first time she's slept away from family since the kidnap. Her therapist said it would be good for her. Didn't seem to care if it was good for me." He gave a wry smile. "Did I tell you how glad I was when you called tonight?"
Elliot was impressed that Toby was sitting here. If Dickie or Lizzie had been through what Holly had been through, Elliot would have been in his car outside that house, would have broken down the door the second they called. "How's she doing?"
"Remarkably well, considering all she's been through. This age, though... I can explain things to the adults in her life, but I have to set her loose in a sea of insensitive pre-teens who want to watch scary movies."
"Do her friends know what happened to her?"
"Most of it. These are the same kids she was at school with when she was taken, and my prison stint is public knowledge, so she doesn't have a lot of secrets. In September, though... She's starting middle school, and it's going to be a sea of strangers."
Elliot could imagine. There probably weren't too many kids in Holly's circle whose parents had done time. Let alone the rest of it. "Maureen was with me when we came across a crime scene, once." It was one of Elliot's biggest regrets in all his years on the job. "Body set alight. She had nightmares for a month." She still found an excuse to leave the room if there was a burning building on the TV.
"She's your oldest."
"Yeah. She's started talking about doing her science post-grad in Boston." Post-grad. When the hell did that happen?
"Harvard? I went to Harvard. It's a good school."
In Elliot's dreams. "BU. Which is still three and a half hours away."
"Closer than Stanford."
"Don't even joke about it." Elliot remembered that was about as far away Toby's nine year-old lived. No way in hell.
"You think any of yours will follow you into the force?"
"Nooooo." Thank god. "I think Kathy would kill me."
Toby looked startled. "Kathy?"
"My wife. Ex-wife." He was going to have to get used to calling her that.
"Huh."
They talked about their kids a while, until the food was gone and Elliot was fit to burst, but he didn't want to go home yet. Toby didn't seem motivated to head home, either. "You want to grab a beer?"
"I, uh..." Toby chewed his lip, looking downright scared for a moment, but he swallowed it down. "I'm not... I need to stay away from bars."
Because he hooked up in bathrooms? Elliot was reasonably sure he hadn't done that when they went for drinks last week. He hadn't been gone that long.
"I'm an alcoholic."
"We were at a bar last... Wait... You're an alcoholic?" Toby had been drunk when he killed that girl. Elliot felt like a heel. "Why didn't you tell me?" Toby looked awkward, and Elliot kicked himself. Why would he want to announce it to someone he barely knew? Elliot looked at his second beer of the night, remembered Toby had been drinking water. "I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry. You didn't make me an alcoholic."
"You're trying to get sober?" Not doing a great job of it, judging by last weekend. Elliot felt himself pulling back.
He sighed. "I was sober for seven and a half years."
"What happened?"
Toby touched his glass of water, turned it around, pushed it away. "You wanted to go for a beer. I wanted to see you. Didn't want you to think I was a more of a loser than you already knew."
"You broke seven years of sobriety just because I asked you out to a bar?"
"No. I drank because I'm an alcoholic."
It may have been true, but it didn't make Elliot feel any better. He should have known. Maybe Toby had even said it, back in one of the interviews. "Shit, Toby. I don't make a habit of dragging alcoholics to bars. Next time, how about you suggest going out for ice cream instead?"
Toby smiled. "Ice cream? Yeah, that's real manly."
"Screw you, I love ice cream."
That got a genuine laugh, the first Elliot had seen. "Thank you."
"For what?"
"Not being a dick about it."
"You're not the only alcoholic I know." The only one Elliot had ever enabled, maybe. "You can't be drinking, Toby. You're all Holly's got."
"I know. Mother keeps reminding me. She... found out." Elliot wondered what stood in that pause. He was sure it hadn't gone down well. "She's been calling me every second day to check on me."
"Good for her."
"I know. It was just that night, and I've put myself back in counselling."
"Your daughter's more important than seeing me."
"She is. But having a friend is... I've really enjoyed talking to you."
"Yeah, me too." Elliot cringed at how gay that sounded. He wasn't going to tell him how Munch and Cragen had stared when he bounced out of the station at five-thirty today.
"So, food from now on."
"Or ice cream."
"Or ice cream," Toby agreed.
"Sounds good to me." It sounded like this was going to happen more often. He wasn't happy to find out Toby was an off-the-wagon alcoholic, but he deserved a chance. Elliot could stick around, as long as Toby could stay sober.
"I can't fit ice cream in after all this, but if you're dreading going home like I am, there's a nice view from the park."
It sounded a hell of a lot better than home. "Sure."
The wind had died down, and it was close enough to walk. The sidewalk was clear, but grey snow was piled up in gutters and along the fronts of the brownstones. When they reached the shoreline Elliot tugged his beanie over his head, glad he had his heavy coat. They strolled to the end of the pier to stare across the Hudson at the lights of the Jersey skyline. A little romantic for Elliot's comfort - the couple hugging beside them seemed to think so - but Toby didn't notice so Elliot told himself not to be so uptight. "Holly never called back. Guess she's okay."
"I hope so."
"My lot always loved having friends over. Maureen and Lizzie and Dickie were happy having one stay, but in Kathleen's tween years I'd stumble home from work to find five girls giggling in the kitchen, eating cold pizza or making popcorn. It was kinda nice." When it was late, he'd peek in to see them crammed on the floor of the basement in their sleeping bags: sometimes all passed out, sometimes a last couple of hold-outs, quietly talking about whatever it was girls talked about after midnight, going all silent and wide-eyed at his intrusion. "Guess I'm not going to get to do that with Lizzie." There weren't going to be any sleepovers in his cramped apartment. "I lost so much of their lives to the job, now I don't see them at home. Feels like they just keep getting further away."
"So fix it." He sounded like Kathy.
"It's not that simple."
Toby laughed. "Do you really want to play one-upmanship on parental absence with me?" That shut Elliot up. Toby continued, and Elliot didn't know how he sounded so calm. "Do you want to punish yourself, or do you want to fix it? Because you can't do both at the same time. I wreaked a trail of destruction through my whole family, but Holly's celebrating her friend's birthday, bundled up in a sleeping bag and eating cake." He nodded towards the skyline, the Staten Island Ferry pushing by. "With you or without you, it just keeps rolling along."
"Not everything is your fault."
"It was." Toby shrugged off his look. "It's not a guilt complex. All of the worst things that have happened to the people I care about, every one can be traced back to the day I got behind the wheel drunk off my ass."
Elliot turned to lean back against the railing, stared at the white mist of his breath."I guess I don't know much about your story." Olivia had been the one who skimmed Toby's file during the Markstrom case, and Elliot hadn't been all that interested at the time. He hadn't anticipated late night heart-to-hearts on the pier.
"Don't be tempted to read my file, all right?"
"Of course not." Maybe Toby was some kind of mind reader. Elliot chased back for where the thread of the conversation had gone wrong. "Does Holly ever have friends over?"
"She doesn't have many friends. None with parents who want their daughters to sleep over with a single father ex-con." It came out too quiet, like it hurt. "She has her friends over at my mother's."
Elliot swallowed. Lizzie wouldn't dare to ask to stay with some guy who'd been in prison. Even now, knowing Toby a little - knowing some of the sordid details - he'd hesitate to let Lizzie sleep over with Holly.
Toby leaned on his elbows on the railing. "She had a brother."
Now Elliot looked at Toby: in the shadows of the lamplight he could see his jaw was clenched as he stared across the water. "Harry?"
"Gary. They were kidnapped together."
Gary never made it home. "Hell." There was that twisting knife Elliot felt every time he faced the parents of a dead child. But this time he knew Toby, had seen how close he was to his daughter, and the knife just kept on going. He was grateful for the dark. "Did they find him?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry for your loss." He hated those words, but in twenty years, he'd never found anything better. "Did they get the guy?" If they didn't, Elliot was heading back to the house tonight to get his hands on the file.
"He got off on a technicality."
Fucking lawyers.
Toby gave a shrug. "He's dead. He must have got tangled up with the mob - they hit him a few months later."
"How old was Gary?"
"Eight. Two years older than Holly. He'd be thirteen, now."
Dickie's age. "Do you want to talk about him?"
Toby straightened, surprised by the question. He curled his gloved hands around the rail. "No. It just feels like a shameful secret when I don't mention him."
They fell quiet. They'd become friends because Elliot was curious about how Toby held it together after everything that had happened to him. Elliot hadn't known the half of it. It was a miracle Toby only struggled with alcohol.
Toby pulled his phone out of his pocket, checked a message. "Mel says they've all fallen asleep."
The wind picked up and Elliot shuddered, lifted his collar. "Come on." He started back towards shore, Toby falling in beside him.
It was late when Elliot drove Toby home. He stayed in his car, but he didn't drive away until Toby had let himself into the building and climbed the stairs out of sight. Elliot had plenty of fears for his own family, but Toby beat them all. One dead, one traumatised, one a stranger. No mother.
Elliot checked his watch. Too late for the twins, and Kathleen wouldn't want to hear from him. Maureen would be up.
"Dad, is everything okay?"
"Yeah, fine. It's not too late to call, is it?"
"No, but you don't call this late. What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I just wanted to see how you're doing."
"Did something happen at work?"
Elliot tipped his head back on the head rest. "Am I that bad at keeping up with you?"
He heard her sigh. "No. It's just almost eleven. My friends call me this late. You and mom never do unless somebody's in hospital. Usually you."
"I'm fine. Perfect health, I promise. I was just talking about you with a friend, and I realised I hadn't seen you in a couple of weeks."
"You have a friend?"
"Yes, I went out and found myself a friend since we last spoke. That's how long it's been. So could we maybe organise a lunch, or a coffee or something?"
"Sure, Dad." He could hear her grinning. It helped.
Toby wondered if Elliot waited for him to go inside just to be sure he wasn't doubling back to the package store. He didn't need to worry: Toby was feeling stronger today. Good food and decent conversation beat the hell out of staring at a cold beer, even when that perfect resemblance was beginning to break down.
Toby had forgotten the smell of Chris. Elliot had brought it back by being wrong. Elliot looked right and sometimes he sounded right but he smelled like pressed clothes and some unfamiliar aftershave. Chris had smelled like prison soap and fresh sweat, like someone had bottled Clint Eastwood and James Dean and an extra quart of testosterone.
Toby hung up his coat and unwound his scarf. Out on the pier, Elliot bundled against the cold so Toby couldn't see him or smell him, Toby hadn't been thinking so much of Chris at all.
The empty apartment felt like sensory deprivation. Like those first weeks of freedom in his mother's house, where solid walls and heavy furnishings swallowed all the sounds of life. She'd had doors that closed, lights that switched off to leave you in total darkness. Who would have guessed that the creak of your murderer-roommate shifting in the bed below you could be a comfort?
Toby wandered around the apartment picking up Holly's things and putting them down again. Fix it, he'd told Elliot. Chris would have told Toby to fix things with Harry. They're your blood, Toby.
Toby checked the time. Not late in San Diego. He sat on the couch and pulled up his call list, took a slow deep breath before hitting call. Now he felt the craving for a martini. Harry was the only person he could call who wouldn't wonder if he'd been drinking.
"Hello?"
"Hi Marta. It's Toby. How are you?"
"I'm well, Toby, how are you?"
"Fine. How is the merger going?" Toby wanted to give Harry a cell phone so he could call him any time, without making polite conversation with Marta or Jonah first, but Marta and Jonah thought Harry was too young for his own cell phone.
"Coming along. How's Holly?"
"At a sleepover. It's pretty quiet here, so I was hoping..."
"You want to talk to Harrison? He's up here somewhere. Harrison!"
Toby could hear her climbing the stairs. "How is he?"
"Great. He had a solo in the school choir on Monday night. You should have heard him, Toby."
Toby's next breath went down sideways. He'd never heard Harry sing. He'd never been to any of his concerts, or his windsailing competitions, or a parent-teacher conference.
"Harrison, it's your father."
The phone clunked as it was passed over, and then Harry's clear voice came down the line. "Hi Dad."
"Hey, Harry. What are you up to?"
"Making a poster."
"For school?"
"Yeah."
"What's it about?"
"We had to choose a mammal. I picked echidnas."
"They're Australian, right?"
"Yeah. They lay eggs." He sounded like he was only half paying attention, concentrating on his poster as they talked.
"Marta said you were great in the choir on Monday."
"I was okay."
"I wish I could have heard you."
"It was nothing special."
"Everything you do is special, Harry. Maybe next time you could ask your Nan to record it for me."
"Okay."
Toby pulled his legs under him. "So what else have you been doing? Have you been hanging out with Aaron and Phil?"
Toby dragged the conversation on a little longer, until he'd run out of things to ask or tell. Harry didn't seem bothered when he finally said goodbye.
Elliot's stomach growled when he took his pulled pork sandwich out of the microwave and took it back to his desk.
Finn sniffed as he walked past. "Damn that smells good. You got a spare?"
"Dinner leftovers. Found this place in Red Hook; their cornbread'll change your whole outlook on the world."
"Brooklyn? Did you have a hot date?"
Elliot lifted his head, saw half the squad room looking at him. "Uh. No."
Especially Olivia. "You have been in a good mood today."
"Is that so unusual?" Nobody reacted except Olivia, who was brave enough to cock an eyebrow.
Munch leaned against the edge of Olivia's desk. "You did bounce out of here with an uncharacteristic promptness yesterday."
Elliot dumped his sandwich on its wrapper. "You've all been nagging me to have a social life, so I caught up with a friend."
Finn raised his hands. "We ain't been nagging you; just Olivia. I personally don't give a damn if you're getting laid or not."
"I'm not getting laid!"
Way too loud: now even the captain was standing in his office door, listening.
Elliot rubbed a hand through his hair. "If it's all right with all of you, I'm seeing Maureen after work tonight, so can we get this to bed so I can actually leave on time?"
Tonight Toby had found a spot in Soho that did chilli-chocolate ice cream to make good on their ice cream plan. Dinners - or late night snacks - had become an irregular weekly thing as the winter dragged on through February, whenever they could fit them between their kids and Elliot's job. Elliot dragged Toby to a place that did great souvlaki the day his divorce was finalised, and Toby invited Elliot out to Little Italy one evening when he found himself salivating in the window of the package store. When Toby craved a drink, he called his counsellor or he called Elliot. He was getting to know Elliot pretty well.
For some reason, Elliot seemed to like talking to Toby. From the stilted, stumbling attempts to articulate his feelings and the detached descriptions of his relationships, Toby suspected he didn't do it a lot. He felt cut off from his kids by divorce and their growing up, feared that his attempts to bring them back just pushed them away. Toby understood.
Toby swallowed, enjoying the warm-cold of the dessert. It felt strangely indulgent to be sitting in here eating ice cream, watching through the window as people hurried along the snowy sidewalk, huddled in their coats. "How do the others in your squad handle it? Work, their families?"
"We're all divorced. Except Liv, who never married. Saved herself some paperwork."
"Does she have family?"
Elliot sucked his spoon clean. "Nah. No father, mother died a few years back. Just the job."
"That must be hard."
"We don't talk about it much. But yeah." He stared out the window, playing with his spoon.
"Does it break some kind of sacred cop-partner trust to tell her you worry?"
Elliot gave him a sharp look. "Yeah. It does. You don't know how it is. I spend more time with Liv than I ever did with Kathy. We've seen each other through some bad days. There's not a lot of privacy left, so you hold on to what you can."
Toby wondered what it was like, balancing a relationship like that with a marriage. Gen had always paid attention to the female lawyers at his firm, seemed happier when he had a male assistant. It was never overt; there were never jealous accusations, but he noticed her noticing, and he'd picked his work stories carefully to ease her worries.
Elliot butted heads with a few of his colleagues, but he respected them. He craved his boss's approval like a father, and Toby suspected he got it more than he realised.
Every insight dragged him a little further from the man Toby was searching for, and every meal was a disappointment and a relief. Elliot's face was stolen from a ghost, but this wasn't Chris. Elliot didn't challenge him or infuriate him or terrify him like Chris had, didn't make his blood sing or his cock throb. Not that Toby could pretend he wouldn't like to fuck him, given half a chance. Toby could hear Chris sneer in the back of his mind, but Toby's cock wouldn't much care about the trivial differences. It was probably lucky Elliot was a super-hetero cop. It saved Toby from screwing this up.
Meanwhile, Elliot was slowly restoring Toby's faith in the world. Elliot cared about his family, his victims, noble ideas of justice, and he worked hard for all of it. Instead of Chris, Toby had found himself a new Said - and wouldn't Said appreciate that, his replacement stuffed in the body of an angry white cop? Elliot gave a damn, and that was a balm to Toby's soul after the selfish survival mentality of prison. He gave a damn about Toby. Somehow Toby had found himself a friend. And if he sometimes looked at Toby just the right way, or tensed his body and fisted his hands when he felt pushed into a corner, then that was more than okay with Toby.
end chapter 5
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.
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no subject
Date: 2014-10-07 11:01 am (UTC)Oh, great line about "fucking lawyers." I get the feeling that Elliot in canon doesn't like them very much either. Except when they're on his side like Alex and Casey. Toby can be another exception.
Will be interesting to see how they get even closer.
Great chapter.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-08 01:11 pm (UTC)Nah, I'm sure Said would love being compared to Elliot. A violence-prone white cop who bends the rules to protect his own.
Elliot seems to find DAs tolerable, depending on the day. It's the rest of the profession he hates. (It was a moment I loved in the show, when he had to hire a lawyer to defend Kathleen, and explained he'd picked her because she was the biggest shark around.)
S.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-07 01:10 pm (UTC)Excellently done. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-10-08 01:19 pm (UTC)Oh, thank goodness. I really want this to be a slow build, and I was pretty self-indulgent as I wrote it, drifting through whatever details of their life interested me. Which I'm hoping has come out the other side feeling natural, rather than... well, forced or overloaded. :-)
S.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-07 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-08 01:20 pm (UTC)I can appreciate Toby wanting to see Chris, but Elliot's just not a natural fit for the role...
Thanks mulder!
S.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-08 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-08 01:26 pm (UTC)Oh, I really have been living in his cranium. I started writing this January last year, by the end of the month it was 30 000 words, and it ended up eating up the entire year, percolating in my brain.
Sounds like a great description of Chris. Very difficult to leave behind.
Thanks helvetica!
S.