{ split subject }

title: in duplicate
authors: julie levin russo and her groovy professor of TV studies
fandom: SVU! now with Oz crossovers!
challenge: "make it go away" (remainder) at svu100
pairings: Stabler/Beecher, Olivia/Casey, Olivia/Keller, Olivia/Alex
rating: R
words: (drabbles) 111+111+111=333
thanks: all the Olivia fangirls, in solidarity. but especially mandysbitch, because even wee ficlets deserve the best in beta (~julie)
{...standard disclaimers...}

a/n: Two complimentary pieces. The first, a drabble series, by me. Inspired by (that is, written after) the second, a plot synopsis, by my TV professor (though, as you'll see, I've taken substantial liberties with her narrative). A result of our conversations about the recent scandal. She said: there should be a challenge to write fic explaining the pictures! I said: there is!

* * * * * *

{ . }

It’s not supposed to be hard to tell the difference between the cops and the criminals. They haul in some ex-con, Beecher, on a parole violation, and she sees how he looks at Elliot. Watches through the one-way mirror as her partner touches his hand across the table.

Work this job long enough, and all the perps start to look alike. Week after week, a series of interchangeable faces — predators, perverts, deadbeats — until the iterated images of deviance are burned onto her eyelids. Still, she remembers Beecher, observes him loitering near the precinct with suspicious regularity. On these days, Elliot’s grin is especially rakish when he offers to bring her coffee.

*

Olivia devotes herself to forgetting. In Casey, she sees everything Alex is and everything Alex isn’t. For one, Casey is easy; Olivia fucks her in a bathroom stall, demanding and blind. She makes Casey suck her fingers clean, deliberately recalls only her uncanny resemblance to a murderer they put away a few years back. The trill of her cell is piercing as memory, and she doesn’t return Casey’s calls. It’s a tiny allegory of a rupture that will never be mended.

Her life is already haunted, so it doesn’t seem peculiar that their new informant, an inmate called Keller, is a veritable replica of Elliot. When their eyes meet, reality flickers.

*

They only do it when they know they’re being watched. Keller started the game — a leer, a wink, a hand on her shoulder — and it was fascinating to see Elliot bristle. Since Alex left, she doesn’t know him anymore. Or maybe it’s that she doesn’t know herself. She’s as empty as Keller, and leans into his touch. Casey stops calling.

The case is high-profile, and the brass sends Keller along to the scene. Elliot answers his cell, discretely: “Toby, this is work... Well how do you think I feel?... I’m not going to let him.” He scowls over at them. When Keller smirks and bends to kiss her, she kisses back.

* * * * * *

{ .:. }

Beecher is out on parole and moves to NY, but, as a parolee, he's on the cops' radar screen. One day, he gets hauled into the station as a possible suspect for a crime... where he happens to see Elliot. Not surprisingly, given that Elliot is the uncanny spitting image of his very own obsession, Keller, Beecher is immediately taken with him; and, for mysterious reasons, Elliot feels as if he knows Beecher too: he's inexplicably drawn to him, swooning in return. It looks like, even though it could never really work between Beecher and Keller, a love-match with a more reliable guy is happily in Beecher's future.

However, this mutual interest at the station is secretly observed by the scheming and untrustworthy Dr. Emil Skoda—who happens to be the long lost twin brother of Beecher's arch-rival, Vern Schillinger (in contact with this brother, even though no one else knows about it). Skoda reports the news to Schillinger, and they concoct a plan to ensure that Beecher will never know happiness: Skoda will use his psychotherapeutic training to mess with everyone's desires so that Beecher and Elliot will never get together. He decides to hypnotize both Elliot and Olivia, using the trigger "body bag," to persuade them that they're interested in each other, thereby guaranteeing heartbreak for Beecher. [Or, as an alternative to the Simon Legree evilness of this scenario with Skoda, it would also work to have Dr. Huang be the hypnotizing shrink instead, here because it turns out that his long-lost twin brother, Oz's Father Mukada, has always had a huge crush on Beecher, and so that's his motive for persuading his shrink brother to ensure that Beecher doesn't get together with any other guy until he, Mukada, can make his move.] Either way, the SVU shrink manages to hypnotize Elliot and Olivia under the pretense of doing a routine cop-therapy session.

Meanwhile, Beecher, desperate to clear his name from any suspicion and so stay out of prison, volunteers to help the SVU folks find the real criminal, thereby putting himself in danger. The real bad guy comes after Beecher, who's forced to shoot in self-defense. But, even worse, when Elliot and Olivia show up to check out the now-bagged bad guy, their hypnotic triggers are activated, leading them to kiss over the body bag in front of Beecher. Horrified and dismayed, Beecher feels as if he has no reason to try to save himself anymore, and he goes to turn himself in (in his depression, not even claiming self-defense) to brilliant ADA Alex Cabot. But--given this brilliance (and her own certainty, from many long evenings with Olivia, that E and O would never kiss unless someone had tampered with their libidos)--she figures out the whole dastardly plot, lets Beecher off the hook, and "deprograms" E and O, eventually going on to prosecute Skoda (who then joins his twin in Oz) and/or to give probation to the poor suffering Huang/Mukada brothers (who, after all, only did it because of unrequited love). And so they all live happily ever after: Beecher and Elliot, Olivia and Alex, and twin brother with twin brother.

[It does occur to me that there is a perhaps fatal flaw of plausibility for my story (yeah, just one, since the rest is totally plausible!)... which is: why would Skoda (and/or Huang) have to hypnotize Stabler to be interested in someone else (namely, Olivia) to prevent him from being interested in Beecher when, presumably, Stabler's own wife already has this role of putting a damper on other relationships. So I realize that I have to come up with something to take Kathy Stabler out of the picture. So here's my idea on that (allowing me to do a triple cross-over!)]

At some point before our current story begins, Kathy Stabler accompanies Elliot to a "policemen's ball," where she just happens to meet the amazing Diane Whittlesey, correctional officer from Oswald prison. The two are immediately taken with one another and begin a torrid affair. Soon, though, a huge danger arises: some crazed guy who claims that he's a Mafia boss in New Jersey, having sunken into a delusional state since he stopped therapy with the talented Dr. Jennifer Melfi because of unresolved transference issues, seems to believe that Diane Wittlesey is his wife! He freaks out about this supposed "infidelity" and starts making incredibly violent threats to Diane and to her now-lover Kathy... and so the two are forced to leave the country and go into hiding together, thus taking Kathy out of Elliot's life and clearing the way for Elliot to act on his other impulses.

* * * * * *

Appendix - crossover casting key (SVU/Oz unless otherwise noted):

Elliot Stabler / Christopher Keller
Dr. George Huang / Father Ray Mukada
Dr. Emil Skoda (L&O:Mothership) / Vernon Schillinger
Carmela Soprano (The Sopranos) / Diane Whittlesey
Casey Novak / Amelia Chase (SVU #3.10)
(not appearing in this story, but) Brian Cassidy / Ryan O'Reily