DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and all characters are
property of NBC and Dick Wolf.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Silly Lottery Thing
By Del
Ten minutes to go, Olivia calculated. Maybe fifteen. Fifteen minutes until she and Alex would be able to go celebrate the Wyman verdict. Granted, the outcome had never really been in doubt, but a win was a win. Any excuse to celebrate with Alex. A little dinner, a little wine, and then maybe, just maybe, this time . . .
"Thank you," Alex said, nodding at the eighth person to squeal "Congratulations!" or "Alex, my God!" to her since the pair stepped out of the elevator.
"Wow, your co-workers are really supportive," Olivia observed. "Do they hate Wyman or something?"
"Wyman?" Alex replied. "Oh. Maybe. Or they might be talking about me winning the lottery this morning."
Olivia halted mid-step. "Excuse me?" She gaped at Alex as the attorney strode into her office and dropped her briefcase onto her desk.
"Yeah, I forgot to mention it," Alex said.
"Excuse me?"
"Six out of six numbers," Alex said, glancing absently at her notes for tomorrow's hearing. "Hundred and forty eight million dollars, or something like that."
"Excuse me?"
"Turns out I was the only winner," she went on, "and my first time buying tickets, too." Alex made a note to herself in the margin of her legal pad, and decided she wouldn't need any more prep time before the hearing. "I'd never picked numbers before. What are the odds of that?"
There was no reply, and she looked over to see her friend sitting straight up on the couch, staring into space.
"Liv?"
"Are you going to quit?" Olivia blurted out anxiously.
"What?"
"Are you going to quit being our ADA?"
Studying the detective for a moment, Alex asked, "Do you think I should?"
"You know, taxes are going to knock that down to, like, eighty million," Olivia said. "And did you pick annual payments?"
"Yes."
"See? So you won't be getting it all at once."
Crossing her arms, Alex nodded. "True," she said. "I'll only get a few million a year."
"Well, OK, that's probably enough to get by on," Olivia admitted. "But can you imagine not working? Just sitting around all day cutting ribbons and shit? I mean, just kill me now."
"I could always travel," Alex countered. "Sail around the world for a year or two . . ."
Olivia slumped back against the soft cushions. "Yeah," she said. "You could. I guess that'd be a lot better than having perps tell you to fuck off, and attorneys telling you to fuck off, and judges telling you to fuck off, and--"
"Detectives telling me to fuck off," Alex added with a smirk. "You've given a pretty accurate description of my job, actually."
Olivia nodded, resigned to the inevitable. "Yeah."
"Yeah." Alex let the silence drag on until Olivia finally looked up at her. "Olivia, if you had a chance, would you travel around the world?" she asked.
"When I'm too old to chase pervs down the block without breaking a hip, maybe," Olivia replied.
"But now?"
The detective shook her head. "No."
"Would you quit SVU?" Alex continued.
"No."
"Then there's your answer," Alex said.
"My answer to what?"
"To whether I'll be leaving SVU." Rising from her desk, Alex stepped over to the couch and knelt in front of the other woman. "I'm in this for the long haul."
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Finally, Olivia swallowed. "Are you talking about SVU?" she asked.
"I'm talking about an SVU detective," Alex said. "A detective whose name has six letters in it. If you're in SVU, I'm in SVU. If you're in narcotics, I'm in narcotics. If you transfer to Animal Control, I'm the shaggy ADA." A bit nervous, Alex leaned forward and gently pressed her lips to Olivia's. Both women savored the contact, and then Alex leaned back on her heels. "Only now, when we can't find a shelter for an abused kid, I can buy one."
Olivia smiled. After another long silence, this one much calmer than the first, she said, "First or last?"
"What?"
"Did you use my first name or last name to pick your numbers?"
"Both," Alex said. "I bought two tickets."
"Wasted your money on that other one, huh?" Olivia grinned.
"Totally," she agreed. "But I got to spell out your name and carry it around in my purse." Alex smiled back at her.
"Guess it's a little more subtle than drawing 'AC+OB' inside a heart," Olivia said.
"I did that, too." Alex rose and sat next to Olivia on the couch. "The first payment will come in a month or two," she said. "What should we do with it?"
"Were you serious about a shelter?"
"Completely."
"Hmm," Olivia mused. "What else will we need if we keep working together?"
Alex reached over and laid her hand on Olivia's, stroking the back of it with her index finger. "Well, there is that little motel midway between our offices . . . ."
Olivia covered Alex's hand with hers and moved it onto her thigh. "Sounds like a good investment," she said. "Want to go down there and get a brochure?"
"Yes to both," Alex purred. "Let's go spend some of my money . . ."
The End