DISCLAIMER: Most characters are not mine, but I'm using them for entertainment and not for profit. The story is my own.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The “Drinks” series of short pieces: limited to fewer than three full pages, written primarily as fragments of conversations, each featuring at least one drink. The stories are completely unrelated, unless otherwise stated and don’t fit in any particular timeline. They also may be unrelated to canon. I just try to keep the characterization true. I hope I’ve succeeded in that.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Drinks Series:
Gin
By Allie
Olivia Benson rubbed away condensation from the inside of the glass of the greenhouse and looked out at the pastoral scene on the other side. The Cabot compound, on the edge of a lake in western Connecticut, was like something out of a TV Christmas special. It was only Thanksgiving, but it had been snowing on and off for the preceding two days and the grounds looked beautiful, with snow clinging to evergreens and lying untouched on acres of lawn. She was there as the guest of New York ADA Alex Cabot, but she'd quickly discovered that Alex's family dominated her attention, leaving Olivia with plenty of time to explore the house and its immediate surroundings. So far, the greenhouse was her favorite place – indoors at any rate.
"Oh my god, did Lana invite you?" Olivia turned around and met the surprised look of one of Alex's cousins' wives.
"Laura, right?" she asked, not entirely sure if that one was Laura or Lorna. She's wondered if a name beginning with the letter "L" was the preferred prerequisite for a Cabot man taking a wife, along with emaciation and blond hair. As far as she could tell, the only exception was Suzanne, who had dark curls and looked as though she ate regularly.
"Yes. And you're Olivia, right?"
"Yes. I'm sorry, am I intruding? I didn't know anybody was going to be here and it's so beautiful."
"You're not intruding. In fact you pretty much qualify to be a member. We're having a meeting of the Cabots' Wives Club. When we're here, it's the greenhouse, when we're at the ski lodge, it's the billiard room and in Mustique we use whichever guest house happens to be unoccupied."
"The Cabots' Wives…?"
"We had to band together to survive." The statement came from Lana, the tallest and the skinniest of the blondes and the only one whom Olivia had never seen sober. She fluffed her shoulder-length hair and looked at Laura. "Have the supplies been delivered?"
"I don't know." She walked over to a fridge that Olivia had barely noticed, her ponytail bouncing jauntily against her back. "Mixers, lime and lemon slices, all here," she announced cheerily. "Lester, the butler, always makes sure our meeting room is properly stocked," she explained for Olivia's benefit. "He's been with the family for decades, so he feels our pain."
"Hello, everyone. You guys are early! I thought I'd be the first one here." That was definitely Lorna, with the short, platinum blond hair and the shy smile.
"Hi, all." Suzanne sounded breathless. "Sorry I'm late – although I didn't think I was." She brandished a bottle of gin. "I brought extra, just in case. Do we have ice?"
"Bless you." Lana snatched the bottle out of the brunette's hand and started pouring generous amounts into tumblers that Laura had been lining up as Lorna dropped in ice from a cooler next to the fridge. They'd done it before. Lana finished up with the garnish, asking Olivia, "Lemon or lime?"
Neither, at 10:00 in the morning. "Lime, please." Olivia was too fascinated by the whole thing to follow her instinct to politely leave the women to it.
As the first drink was downed, the women settled on a set of wicker chairs that had been placed to take advantage of the winter light. Conversation immediately turned to the children, who were cleaning the stables, because Dorothy thought slinging horse dung would build character. Alex was supervising because she remembered her own manure-scented days and she enjoyed a certain amount of schadenfreude as she watched them work.
Lorna had no children and she rolled her eyes at Olivia, who was tempted to smirk. It quickly became apparent, though, that the women thought the rigid schedule the younger Cabots had to follow was hilarious – not to mention liberating for their mothers. "Cabot family events are better than summer camp," Suzanne explained, "because Old Mrs. Cabot is the scariest camp counselor you can imagine. Back ramrod-straight, face that would shatter if it cracked a smile and the ultimate mistress of discipline." Old Mrs. Cabot was Alex's grandmother, Dorothy.
"How someone impregnated that woman, not once, but three times, is a complete mystery to me," Lana drawled, pouring herself a second drink. "Loins of fuckin' kryptonite."
"What about the Cabot husbands?" Olivia wanted to know. There were two of them in Alex's generation.
"They're no fun," Laura explained. "Hugh is so damn grateful he married into the family that he turns into a simpering invertebrate whenever he's near more than two Cabots at a time." Her tone softened the judgment, making it seem more blunt than cruel. "Reginald, on the other hand, has made it his life's work to prove that he married beneath him."
Suzanne laughed. "We always wish him luck with that. Dorothy thinks the Morgans and the Rockefellers are upstarts."
"But enough about the family, sugar, why don't you tell us about yourself?" Laura was definitely the den mother of the group.
"I'm an NYPD detective. I met Alex on the job."
"Completely understandable. Uniforms are very sexy," Laura smiled.
"And speaking of sex," Lara said.
"Which we always do," Suzanne added.
"Which category does the gorgeous Alex fall into?" Lana asked, as she got up to freshen everyone's drinks.
"Category?" Olivia asked. Completely at a loss as to what Lana meant.
Laura stepped in. "The Cabot men fall into two categories: the ones who absolutely, positively can not have sex within a mile of Old Mrs. Cabot and the ones for whom a family get-together is the genesis of all horniness and they will fuck you in a broom closet, if one is handy and a family activity isn't scheduled for the next five minutes."
Olivia could feel the blush rising from the top of the turtleneck she had put on to hide the two faint hickeys that had been Alex's gift to her the night before. She was pretty sure there was also one on her breast and that there were some serious scratch marks on her back, as well. Theirs had been a clandestine relationship until Alex had gone into the witness protection program four years earlier and a pretty physical and open one since the attorney's return to New York, but this had been the first "meet the family" trip, so Olivia had not been sure what to expect. Nevertheless, she realized that she'd had a vague expectation that Alex would be somewhat sexually subdued around all that tradition and the rigidity of the family matriarch's scheduling expectations. The opposite had been the case. Not that Olivia had been about to complain about being athletically fucked a minimum of three times a day. Still, there was something unsettling about learning that it was some sort of freakish genetic trait.
"Ooo, I guess that answers that question!" Lana's giggle seemed to be infectious and after the other women had all but collapsed with laughter at Olivia's tell-tale blush, Olivia had found herself smiling, too. In all her visions of what things would be like in the rarified atmosphere of the Cabot compound, that bizarre little meeting in the greenhouse had not been a featured possibility.
"You lucky devil," Suzanne finally managed to gasp. "Jim has to be safely in his own home for a week before he can sustain an erection. I think Dorothy walked in on him while he was masturbating as a teenager, because there is no logical explanation for it."
That elicited further laughter and then Lana said, "We spent a week in Banff at the ski lodge and by night number five I was pretending to be asleep when Terence got in." She grinned at Olivia, "Now I know better. His family-related horniness is my opportunity to ask for anything I want. At Christmas, I get more head than a beer stein at Oktoberfest. So just make up your wish list, Olivia, because if Alex is like her cousin, all you gotta do is ask…"
Olivia laughed because she was pretty much in that situation anyway and because she was picturing Alex's face if she ever got an inkling about the conversation that was taking place. "Honestly, I don't need the family factor," she said, trying not to squirm.
The women fell silent before Lorna, the shy one, said, "Aw sweet, they're still on honeymoon!"
Lana snorted. "She might be doing everything you want or ask for, but what have you been reluctant to ask for so far? Come on, Olivia, there has to be some dark sexual desire that you think will make the little blond Cabot run for the hills."
"I dunno, Lana, we're pretty… open. I don't think lesbians really have as much of an issue with that as a guy would have in approaching a woman."
"I was a lesbian for seven years." Four heads snapped around to look at quiet, shy Lorna. "What? Ok, technically, I was bisexual, but if I ever fall out of love with David, I don't know…"
Olivia was relieved that the focus had shifted away from her, because she'd actually started to think about some things that were way beyond vanilla, but which had always intrigued her. Her mind drifted towards the possibilities for after-lunch entertainment and she began to smile.
The family gathered for lunch at 1:00 p.m. and Olivia realized that the reason the Cabot women were usually subdued at the midday meal was that they were all hammered. She tried not to laugh as she watched them enunciate carefully to avoid slurring words and focus with almost cross-eyed intensity on anything Dorothy said, in case they were called upon to respond.
After lunch, she practically dragged Alex back to their room, closing the door behind them and pushing the ADA against it before pressing their bodies together and slanting her mouth over Alex's in a deep, hot kiss. Alex moaned and broke away from the kiss long enough to gasp. "What did you do this morning that's got you in this mood? Not that I mind."
"I was at a meeting of the Cabots' Wives Club."
"What? What is that? Who…?"
"Shh!" Olivia interrupted, with a wicked grin. "What happens at Wives Club, stays at Wives Club. Besides, I have an idea for an activity that's a lot more fun than talking."
The End