wizened_cynic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wizened_cynic) wrote2007-03-30 01:18 am
wizened_cynic) wrote2007-03-30 01:18 am
Entry tags:
it's not baby fic if it's a TODDLER
I know I've beem spammy as of late, but in a couple of months, my life will be irrevocably altered and you might NEVER HEAR FROM ME AGAIN. So, I must ramble and bitch while I still can!
No, I'm not pregnant.
Anyhow, I wrote fic! Cracky-cracky-crack fic! Follow up to the crossover within a crossover. This one is weird because it's Alex/Olivia! For reals! And there is a surprise extra crossover! Because my brain is just one mishmash of TV shows!
Take Your Daughter to Work Day
The suspension was over, but A.J. was still here.
There had been a part of Alex so sure that this was all a nightmare, a complete figment of her imagination. She'd been convinced that A.J. would mysteriously disappear and return to wherever she'd come from as soon as Alex returned to work.
Alex wasn't sure whether it was disappointment or relief she felt when she opened her eyes Monday morning and found A.J.'s warm body curled up next to her own.
A.J. was a morning person. She woke up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, her tiny, neat rows of teeth revealed in a face-splitting grin. "G'morning," she chirped, and then reached over and poked Alex in the eye with a slobbery finger.
Disappointment.
Maybe a little relief.
Mostly panic, when Alex realized she would have to find a babysitter within the next fifteen minutes, or take the child along with her to work. Somehow she'd never envisioned herself making a comeback with a Cheerio-encrusted toddler in tow. But Alex had no idea how to procure a babysitter on such short notice, and she didn't know her neighbors well enough to entrust them with her child.
"Hey, A.J., do you want to go to someplace fun today?" Alex said, as she scrubbed A.J.'s hands with antibacterial soap, all the way from her fingers to her elbows. At least there wasn't any food glued to A.J.'s hair this time.
A.J.'s eyes darted up. "Go find Lorelai?" she asked for the first time that morning, which ought to be some sort of record.
"No, not quite."
"McDonald?" A.J. ventured again, hopeful.
"You'll be coming to my office. You'll get to see where I work." Alex couldn't muster fake enthusiasm to fool even a two-year-old, but surely someday A.J. would grow up and realize the merits of the Manhattan D.A.'s office over a fast food joint.
"McDonald?" A.J. persisted.
"Sure," Alex told her. She turned off the faucet and dried A.J.'s hands with a towel.
"See Donald McDonald?" A.J. pressed on as Alex carried her to their bedroom to get dressed.
Maybe Alex could work in a visit to Arthur Branch.
*
A.J.'s scowl was pure teenager as she stared up at the looming beast of concrete known as One Hogan Place.
"This is not McDonald," she said, eyeing Alex vehemently.
"It's called reasonable deception," Alex told her. "Live with it."
*
Alex had barely gotten A.J. settled with crayons and a cup of apple juice when Liz Donnelly burst in.
"Some people knock first," Alex said.
"Some people leave their children at home with a nanny," Liz said. She glanced at A.J., who was scribbling on a page that had been ripped out of Alex's day planner. "Are you actively seeking to get yourself fired, Alex?"
"I couldn't find anyone to take her this morning."
"Fine, then drop her off at daycare. What are you going to do, take her in with you to court?"
There was indeed a daycare on the third floor, a perennially snot-covered pen catered for temporarily restraining the children of witnesses who had to testify but couldn't find a babysitter. Alex was going to be damned before her daughter spent one minute in the same room with the offspring of prostitutes and drug addicts.
"I'll find a way," she said. A.J. slid her artwork across the desk and Alex praised it profusely. "Interesting conceptual art piece. Very pretty colors."
"All right," Liz said at last, spinning around on her heels, "do whatever you want. Just make sure she doesn't get in the way." She stopped for a moment in the doorway, and then continued on.
Alex supposed that was Liz's way of saying, Welcome back.
*
The phone rang; Cragen wanted her down at the station for a lineup.
"Hey, A.J.," she tried again, this time with a smile, "you want to go someplace fun?"
A.J. looked up from where she was sitting on the floor, happily shredding old files and documents that Alex had meant to get rid of but never gotten around to. "Where? McDonald?" she asked suspiciously.
"Yes, McDonald's."
A.J. gave her a look that called Alex on her bullshit, then emphasized her point by ripping another piece of paper into quarters.
Alex was beginning to think daycare was a plausible option. After all, A.J. had to learn to socialize with her peers. The parenting books which Alex forced herself to read had stated that clearly, and what was a better place for A.J. to learn how to interact with other human beings than a room full of tots with all kinds of backgrounds (and diseases)?
Alternately, Alex could leave A.J. with her intern, Kelly, but she'd let Kelly watch A.J. earlier, during a meeting, and Alex had come back to find Kelly reading excerpts from People to A.J., instead of something a little more literary.
"Like Vogue?" Kelly had asked. "I've got Vogue too. The French Vogue and the British Vogue and the --"
"Why are you working for the DA's office again?" Alex had asked, and instantly regretted it when Kelly started talking about her boyfriend who finished business school and was now working as an assistant to the regional manager in the New York branch of Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company.
A.J. needed supervision, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that if Alex wanted anything done, she had to do it herself. So she leaned down to A.J.'s line of sight, and said magic words, "We're going to find Lorelai."
Alex knew it wasn't reasonable deception, but it worked.
*
When Alex returned to the squad room, A.J. was sitting in Cragen's lap and staring at him with wide-eyed adoration. Cragen gazed at her with reciprocal affection, even when A.J. patted his head and asked him why he had no hair. "Is your head cold?" she asked, and he assured her that he had a hat to wear when it got chilly.
"How'd it go?" He set A.J. down on the ground, returning his attention back to his detectives.
"Victim ID'ed him," Olivia said. "Elliot's taking him to central booking right now."
"I'll arraign him first thing in the morning."
Alex hoisted A.J. onto her hip, and A.J. slung an arm around Alex's neck, squirming until she found a comfortable position. "Where's Lorelai?" she demanded, and caught off-guard, Alex asked, "Who?"
"Lorelai," A.J. repeated. "We find Lorelai."
"Who's Lorelai?" Olivia asked.
"I don't know," Alex said, and A.J. swiveled her head to look straight at Alex -- who knew two-year-olds were so smart? They certainly didn't seem that intelligent to the average onlooker -- and immediately contorted her face into the exact replica of Edvard Munch's magnum opus.
The first shriek was loud, and the volume just ascended from there.
"I want Lorelai!" A.J. screamed, startling Alex so much Alex almost dropped her. "I want Lorelai! Mommy bad! I want Lorelai!"
Olivia's gaze remained fixed on Alex, even as she and Cragen tried to calm down the sobbing child.
"I really don't know who Lorelai is," Alex said.
*
In the end, they set A.J. up with a sketch artist.
"This is insane," Alex said. "She's two."
"It's either that, or we start taping the windows so the glass wouldn't break," Munch said. A.J. was refusing to make eye contact with Alex at all, seeking safer harbors in the embraces of Munch and Fin.
Munch sat down beside the sketch artist, holding A.J. in his lap. "Here you go, sweetie. Tell the nice man what Lorelai looks like."
It turned out exactly as Alex expected, which was that A.J. could not tell the artist much more than, "No, no, not like dis!" A.J.'s attention span held out for maybe seven minutes, but her tantrum was quelled by a preliminary sketch of Lorelai and a cartoon drawing of a cat, which the sketch artist threw in for free.
A.J. seemed to have forgiven Alex somewhere along the line, and was willing to be held again. "Lorelai," she said blissfully, waving the drawing.
"Don't lose it," Alex told her.
"You don't lose it," A.J. retorted, and when she smiled, Alex was almost glad that A.J. had stayed after all.
*
By the time she returned to her apartment, it was well past ten. A.J. was fast asleep, and Alex scrubbed her face and hands with a towel and then tucked her in bed, not bothering with pajamas. Getting A.J. out of her clothes now would only proceed to wake her up, which would inevitably lead to tears.
Even in sleep, the sketch of Lorelai remained tight in A.J.'s grip. Alex had to pry her little fingers open to remove it before she tucked the covers around her.
Alone in the kitchen, waiting for the tea to brew, Alex studied the picture. A woman, completely unfamiliar to her. Huang believed Lorelai to be A.J.'s imaginary friend, but Alex didn't know if she bought into that theory.
A.J. loved Lorelai, whoever Lorelai was. You couldn't love anyone that much if they weren't real.
On the other hand, A.J. was also two, and two-year-olds made as much sense as schizophrenics.
Alex found a magnet in one of her kitchen drawers, a free gift from One More Sushi, and stuck the drawing on the door of her refrigerator.
Good night, Lorelai, she thought to herself. Maybe I'll find you in the morning.
No, I'm not pregnant.
Anyhow, I wrote fic! Cracky-cracky-crack fic! Follow up to the crossover within a crossover. This one is weird because it's Alex/Olivia! For reals! And there is a surprise extra crossover! Because my brain is just one mishmash of TV shows!
The suspension was over, but A.J. was still here.
There had been a part of Alex so sure that this was all a nightmare, a complete figment of her imagination. She'd been convinced that A.J. would mysteriously disappear and return to wherever she'd come from as soon as Alex returned to work.
Alex wasn't sure whether it was disappointment or relief she felt when she opened her eyes Monday morning and found A.J.'s warm body curled up next to her own.
A.J. was a morning person. She woke up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, her tiny, neat rows of teeth revealed in a face-splitting grin. "G'morning," she chirped, and then reached over and poked Alex in the eye with a slobbery finger.
Disappointment.
Maybe a little relief.
Mostly panic, when Alex realized she would have to find a babysitter within the next fifteen minutes, or take the child along with her to work. Somehow she'd never envisioned herself making a comeback with a Cheerio-encrusted toddler in tow. But Alex had no idea how to procure a babysitter on such short notice, and she didn't know her neighbors well enough to entrust them with her child.
"Hey, A.J., do you want to go to someplace fun today?" Alex said, as she scrubbed A.J.'s hands with antibacterial soap, all the way from her fingers to her elbows. At least there wasn't any food glued to A.J.'s hair this time.
A.J.'s eyes darted up. "Go find Lorelai?" she asked for the first time that morning, which ought to be some sort of record.
"No, not quite."
"McDonald?" A.J. ventured again, hopeful.
"You'll be coming to my office. You'll get to see where I work." Alex couldn't muster fake enthusiasm to fool even a two-year-old, but surely someday A.J. would grow up and realize the merits of the Manhattan D.A.'s office over a fast food joint.
"McDonald?" A.J. persisted.
"Sure," Alex told her. She turned off the faucet and dried A.J.'s hands with a towel.
"See Donald McDonald?" A.J. pressed on as Alex carried her to their bedroom to get dressed.
Maybe Alex could work in a visit to Arthur Branch.
*
A.J.'s scowl was pure teenager as she stared up at the looming beast of concrete known as One Hogan Place.
"This is not McDonald," she said, eyeing Alex vehemently.
"It's called reasonable deception," Alex told her. "Live with it."
*
Alex had barely gotten A.J. settled with crayons and a cup of apple juice when Liz Donnelly burst in.
"Some people knock first," Alex said.
"Some people leave their children at home with a nanny," Liz said. She glanced at A.J., who was scribbling on a page that had been ripped out of Alex's day planner. "Are you actively seeking to get yourself fired, Alex?"
"I couldn't find anyone to take her this morning."
"Fine, then drop her off at daycare. What are you going to do, take her in with you to court?"
There was indeed a daycare on the third floor, a perennially snot-covered pen catered for temporarily restraining the children of witnesses who had to testify but couldn't find a babysitter. Alex was going to be damned before her daughter spent one minute in the same room with the offspring of prostitutes and drug addicts.
"I'll find a way," she said. A.J. slid her artwork across the desk and Alex praised it profusely. "Interesting conceptual art piece. Very pretty colors."
"All right," Liz said at last, spinning around on her heels, "do whatever you want. Just make sure she doesn't get in the way." She stopped for a moment in the doorway, and then continued on.
Alex supposed that was Liz's way of saying, Welcome back.
*
The phone rang; Cragen wanted her down at the station for a lineup.
"Hey, A.J.," she tried again, this time with a smile, "you want to go someplace fun?"
A.J. looked up from where she was sitting on the floor, happily shredding old files and documents that Alex had meant to get rid of but never gotten around to. "Where? McDonald?" she asked suspiciously.
"Yes, McDonald's."
A.J. gave her a look that called Alex on her bullshit, then emphasized her point by ripping another piece of paper into quarters.
Alex was beginning to think daycare was a plausible option. After all, A.J. had to learn to socialize with her peers. The parenting books which Alex forced herself to read had stated that clearly, and what was a better place for A.J. to learn how to interact with other human beings than a room full of tots with all kinds of backgrounds (and diseases)?
Alternately, Alex could leave A.J. with her intern, Kelly, but she'd let Kelly watch A.J. earlier, during a meeting, and Alex had come back to find Kelly reading excerpts from People to A.J., instead of something a little more literary.
"Like Vogue?" Kelly had asked. "I've got Vogue too. The French Vogue and the British Vogue and the --"
"Why are you working for the DA's office again?" Alex had asked, and instantly regretted it when Kelly started talking about her boyfriend who finished business school and was now working as an assistant to the regional manager in the New York branch of Dunder-Mifflin Paper Company.
A.J. needed supervision, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that if Alex wanted anything done, she had to do it herself. So she leaned down to A.J.'s line of sight, and said magic words, "We're going to find Lorelai."
Alex knew it wasn't reasonable deception, but it worked.
*
When Alex returned to the squad room, A.J. was sitting in Cragen's lap and staring at him with wide-eyed adoration. Cragen gazed at her with reciprocal affection, even when A.J. patted his head and asked him why he had no hair. "Is your head cold?" she asked, and he assured her that he had a hat to wear when it got chilly.
"How'd it go?" He set A.J. down on the ground, returning his attention back to his detectives.
"Victim ID'ed him," Olivia said. "Elliot's taking him to central booking right now."
"I'll arraign him first thing in the morning."
Alex hoisted A.J. onto her hip, and A.J. slung an arm around Alex's neck, squirming until she found a comfortable position. "Where's Lorelai?" she demanded, and caught off-guard, Alex asked, "Who?"
"Lorelai," A.J. repeated. "We find Lorelai."
"Who's Lorelai?" Olivia asked.
"I don't know," Alex said, and A.J. swiveled her head to look straight at Alex -- who knew two-year-olds were so smart? They certainly didn't seem that intelligent to the average onlooker -- and immediately contorted her face into the exact replica of Edvard Munch's magnum opus.
The first shriek was loud, and the volume just ascended from there.
"I want Lorelai!" A.J. screamed, startling Alex so much Alex almost dropped her. "I want Lorelai! Mommy bad! I want Lorelai!"
Olivia's gaze remained fixed on Alex, even as she and Cragen tried to calm down the sobbing child.
"I really don't know who Lorelai is," Alex said.
*
In the end, they set A.J. up with a sketch artist.
"This is insane," Alex said. "She's two."
"It's either that, or we start taping the windows so the glass wouldn't break," Munch said. A.J. was refusing to make eye contact with Alex at all, seeking safer harbors in the embraces of Munch and Fin.
Munch sat down beside the sketch artist, holding A.J. in his lap. "Here you go, sweetie. Tell the nice man what Lorelai looks like."
It turned out exactly as Alex expected, which was that A.J. could not tell the artist much more than, "No, no, not like dis!" A.J.'s attention span held out for maybe seven minutes, but her tantrum was quelled by a preliminary sketch of Lorelai and a cartoon drawing of a cat, which the sketch artist threw in for free.
A.J. seemed to have forgiven Alex somewhere along the line, and was willing to be held again. "Lorelai," she said blissfully, waving the drawing.
"Don't lose it," Alex told her.
"You don't lose it," A.J. retorted, and when she smiled, Alex was almost glad that A.J. had stayed after all.
*
By the time she returned to her apartment, it was well past ten. A.J. was fast asleep, and Alex scrubbed her face and hands with a towel and then tucked her in bed, not bothering with pajamas. Getting A.J. out of her clothes now would only proceed to wake her up, which would inevitably lead to tears.
Even in sleep, the sketch of Lorelai remained tight in A.J.'s grip. Alex had to pry her little fingers open to remove it before she tucked the covers around her.
Alone in the kitchen, waiting for the tea to brew, Alex studied the picture. A woman, completely unfamiliar to her. Huang believed Lorelai to be A.J.'s imaginary friend, but Alex didn't know if she bought into that theory.
A.J. loved Lorelai, whoever Lorelai was. You couldn't love anyone that much if they weren't real.
On the other hand, A.J. was also two, and two-year-olds made as much sense as schizophrenics.
Alex found a magnet in one of her kitchen drawers, a free gift from One More Sushi, and stuck the drawing on the door of her refrigerator.
Good night, Lorelai, she thought to herself. Maybe I'll find you in the morning.
no subject
No, after I texted back and forth with you, I couldn't get back to sleep for a little while -- I think I was tossing and turning until nearly 2? 2:30? So, this morning, I was such a slug - could not drag my lazy carcass out until nearly 8. Post shower, shirt ironing, and commute from the 13th circle of hell, biff, bam, boom, 10:20 it was.
no subject
no subject
You're lucky I'm at work and they probably have filters on everything I say/think/type/plot -- or I'd answer that.