FIC: Mens Rea (SVU AU, PG)
Mens Rea (The Fabulously Untrue Story of Two Almost-Lawyers in Not-Quite-Love)
SVU AU, PG
Summary: Mary Sue Olivia and Gary Stu Elliot study for the bar exam, circa 1995. For the SVU AU game.
Day 3: Contracts
Forty-five minutes left. Olivia has already finished the Times crossword, so there’s not much else to do but doodle as the lecturer's brief segue into implied warranties of merchantability threatens to become a full-fledged tangent. She casts about for something to amuse her and ends up staring at the back of the head of the guy two rows in front of her. He's squarely built, which isn't unusual, but he's also sporting a military-style buzz cut, which is. She hasn't seen him here before, which means he's either been sitting somewhere else or he's just switched into the morning class. He turns a page and her eyes are drawn to the movement of his shoulders, his well-defined muscles apparent even though his polo shirt. She watches him for a while, but he doesn't turn at all, and eventually she sighs and goes back to doodling.
Day 8: Agency
During a break she notices Buzz Cut Guy whispering to the blonde-haired woman next to him. He has a nice profile, she thinks. Strong. The blonde woman laughs at whatever he said and he puts his hand on her knee and leans close again. Olivia blushes and looks away, inexplicably turned on.
Day 9: Commercial Paper
Olivia bumps into the guy on the way out of class, only a little bit on purpose.
"Sorry," she mumbles, her mouth suddenly dry.
"Hey, no problem." His eyes crinkle a little around the edges when he smiles.
She's about to say something else but she sees the blonde girl approaching them, so she smiles apologetically and squeezes past him. She can smell his aftershave.
Day 10: Secured Transactions
Two and a half hours into Secured Transactions, Olivia makes a list. Things That Suck, she writes, and underlines it twice. The first four come easily:
1. This lecture.
2. Secured transactions.
3. BarBri.
4. THE BAR EXAM.
She chews on the end of her pen thoughtfully, staring at Buzz Cut Guy.
5. Cute boys with hot girlfriends.
6. Model-perfect blonde girls with perky boobs.
7. THE BAR EXAM.
8. THE MOST BORING LECTURE IN THE HISTORY OF TIME.
Feeling her karma sinking, she quickly adds another column -- Things That Don't Suck -- and tries to remember she's truly grateful for. After several minutes of thought she ends up with:
1. Buzz cuts.
2. Nice muscles.
3. Only fifteen more minutes!!!!
When the lecture mercifully draws to a close, she crumples the list and throws it away. She tries not to look for Buzz Cut Guy on the way out.
Day 13: Evidence
Buzz Cut Guy isn't here today, so Olivia stares at his girlfriend instead, trying to find the flaws that must be there. From the back, though, there don't appear to be any. The girl exudes confidence even in the way she sits, poised and lawyerlike. Olivia slouches and scuffs her toe into the carpet, wishing her hair were honey blonde instead of nondescript brown. Later she sees the girl in the bathroom reapplying her lipstick, and the girl smiles shyly at Olivia in the mirror. Olivia manages a halfhearted smile before ducking into one of the stalls. Her stomach churns and she wonders whether this means she's sick enough to go home.
Day 14: Evidence
Hearsay still sucks, and the only remotely interesting topic is the admissibility of dying declarations. Easy to remember, fun to think about -- deathbed confessions, etc. Very As the World Turns. She glances at Buzz Cut Guy, who has a habit of leaning back in his chair and linking his hands behind his head. She can see a military-looking tattoo on his forearm when he does, and she wonders where he got it.
She wonders what it would taste like.
Day 18: Criminal Procedure
She oversleeps but manages to make it to class only twenty minutes late. She flips through the pages of her outline to see how much she's missed -- fuck. She's gonna have to get the exceptions to the warrant requirement from someone at the break.
When the first break comes, she sees Buzz Cut Guy reclining in his chair. It was as close to an engraved invitation as she was going to get.
"Um, hi," she says as she approaches. His face lights with recognition, which has to be a good sign, right? "I was running late this morning. Can I copy your notes on warrant exceptions?"
"Sorry," he says, his face becoming serious. "Can't share with latecomers. Promptness is essential."
"Oh," Olivia says. "Sure, oka--"
The smile is back, accompanied by a rich laugh. "I'm just messing with you," he says, sliding his notebook across the table. "Here, have fun. Good luck reading my handwriting, though."
"Mind if I sit here to copy?"
"Go ahead," he says, gesturing at the chair beside him.
"Thanks." She flips to the correct pages and begins to write, noticing that Buzz Cut Guy's handwriting is, despite his protestations, neat and clear. She's done within a couple of minutes and slides the book back to him.
"Thanks," she says.
"No problem," he replies. "By the way, I'm Elliot."
"Olivia."
He smiles toothily when they shake hands. "Where'd you go to school?"
Not the same place you did, or I definitely would've remembered, she thinks. "Hudson. You?"
"Me and Alex, we went to NYU. She's born to it, but I'd rather be a cop."
"So why'd you put up with three years of law school?"
"I blew out my knee in the Gulf a few years back. Doesn't bother me most of the time, but it's enough that the Marines won't take me back and the cops won't let me in."
"Battle?"
"Nah, jeep crash." He laughs. "Figures that I go all the way to Saudi Arabia to get into a car accident."
"I'm sorry," she says.
"Don't worry about it. I got a job with the Manhattan DA's office, so that's almost as good as being a cop, right?"
"Better," she says. "DAs probably won't make you do donut runs."
She knows the joke is lame, but he smiles anyway, and she kind of loves him for it.
"What about you?" he asks.
"I worked for the Women's Law Center a couple years out of college," she says. "It's what made me want to be a lawyer in the first place. I got a job with NOW doing outreach and advocacy with a nun who works to keep prostitutes and drug addicts safe. She spoke at school during my first year -- the work she does is pretty incredible."
"Public interest law. Good for you," he says.
She starts to say something else, but the lecturer returns to the podium and clears his throat.
"I'd better go sit down," she says. "Thanks for letting me borrow your notes."
"Any time," he replies, his eyes twinkling.
Day 23: Property
If no one understands the rule against perpetuities, Olivia wonders, why the hell is it on this stupid exam? Or better yet, why didn't people just fucking write their transfers of property so they vest within 21 years?
She doodles absentmindedly until her attention is captured by Elliot leaning over to whisper something in Alex's ear. His arm rests possessively across the back of her chair and Olivia feels a surge of jealousy as he gently strokes her shoulder.
Concentrate on the lecture, she reminds herself. You're here to pass the exam, not to find a boyfriend.
She curses herself when her heart leaps because Elliot smiles at her during the break.
Day 24: Property
Olivia feels someone tugging on her arm as she struggles through the mass of students to the lecture hall's exit.
"Come out with us tonight," Elliot says.
She tries to play it cool, but her heart is racing again, and her arm tingles where his hand rests. "Nah, I've got to study--"
"Forget about studying for one night," he says. "Relax. Come hang out. You know, like you used to do, back before bar review? We're going to get burritos and giant blue margaritas from some Mexican place."
"El Perro Fumado," Alex pipes up from one step behind Elliot. "They'll give you a discount on the giant blue margaritas if you wear something blue."
"I don't really have anythi--"
"Please come," Elliot says, his hand tightening ever so slightly on her arm. "It'll be more fun if you're there."
Long after she says yes, all she can think about is the flash of raw lust she saw in Elliot's eyes.
Day 25: Property
The alarm clock buzzing makes her head pound, so she unplugs it and hurls it across the room before rolling over and closing her eyes again.
Day 26: Wills
She borrows Friday's notes from the tiny redhead sitting next to her and keeps her head down so she won't make eye contact with Elliot. She only remembers Thursday night in flashes -- drinking four giant blue margaritas with Elliot while Alex sipped a strawberry daiquiri and Elliot reached across the table and gently brushed whipped cream off the tip of her nose -- sticking their tongues out at each other and giggling at the bright colors -- laughing until she cried after Alex dared Elliot to drink the table's tabasco sauce and his face turned purple -- bumping Elliot's knee with her own all night -- tasting margarita and tabasco on his tongue as he pressed her up against the wall of the booth and ran his hand up the inside of her thigh while Alex was in the bathroom -- wrapping her ankle around his while he and Alex held hands across the table.
She avoids Elliot by ducking into the bathroom at the breaks, but plows into Alex on her way out.
"Olivia!" Alex says, her face breaking into a huge smile. "When you weren't in class on Friday I got a little worried."
Olivia ignores the stab of guilt knifing through her. "I, um, threw my alarm clock across the room," she says. "I guess I got pretty wasted, huh?"
"I've seen worse. You should hang out with us more often," Alex says conspiratorially. "Elliot hasn't laughed that hard in ages."
"Maybe," she says, shrugging. "I'm kind of behind in my outlining, and I've barely touched the MBE practice questions..."
"I understand," Alex says. "Just ... if you ever want to take the night off, huh? Or maybe we could go shopping or something?"
"Yeah, okay," she says.
"Good."
Alex hands her a scrap of paper with two phone numbers scribbled on it; Olivia waits until she leaves and then tosses the paper into the garbage on her way out.
Day 33: Domestic Relations
"Why haven't you called Alex?"
Olivia jerks away from him. "I don't want to talk about this," she says.
"This isn't about me," Elliot says. "And if what I did means that you don't want to be friends with Alex anymore, then frankly, you suck."
"I can't! Not when--"
"Not when what?"
She shakes her head. "Look, Elliot, I'm not the kind of girl who gets in the middle of someone else's relationship, all right? So don't expect me to pretend that what we did was okay."
"I want you to understand something here: Alex doesn't have a lot of friends. She really likes you, and I love her and I don't want to see her hurt because you can't deal with how things are."
"And that night in the bar, that was your way of, what, not hurting her?"
"I was drunk," he says, like it's the most obvious explanation in the world. "Why does it have to mean something?"
"You're such an asshole," she says, shoving him as she walks away.
Day 34: Personal Property
Olivia spends most of the final lecture staring at the back of Alex's head and trying to figure out a delicate way to say "I really like you but I made out with your boyfriend while you were in the bathroom so maybe you shouldn't date him anymore, and by the way please don't hate me."
She can't come up with anything, though, so she picks up her pen and begins to doodle in the margins of her book. Whatever.
****
A/N: I wrote nearly all of this back in early July -- probably during my BarBri lectures, actually -- and forgot all about it until I found it this afternoon.
SVU AU, PG
Summary: Mary Sue Olivia and Gary Stu Elliot study for the bar exam, circa 1995. For the SVU AU game.
Day 3: Contracts
Forty-five minutes left. Olivia has already finished the Times crossword, so there’s not much else to do but doodle as the lecturer's brief segue into implied warranties of merchantability threatens to become a full-fledged tangent. She casts about for something to amuse her and ends up staring at the back of the head of the guy two rows in front of her. He's squarely built, which isn't unusual, but he's also sporting a military-style buzz cut, which is. She hasn't seen him here before, which means he's either been sitting somewhere else or he's just switched into the morning class. He turns a page and her eyes are drawn to the movement of his shoulders, his well-defined muscles apparent even though his polo shirt. She watches him for a while, but he doesn't turn at all, and eventually she sighs and goes back to doodling.
Day 8: Agency
During a break she notices Buzz Cut Guy whispering to the blonde-haired woman next to him. He has a nice profile, she thinks. Strong. The blonde woman laughs at whatever he said and he puts his hand on her knee and leans close again. Olivia blushes and looks away, inexplicably turned on.
Day 9: Commercial Paper
Olivia bumps into the guy on the way out of class, only a little bit on purpose.
"Sorry," she mumbles, her mouth suddenly dry.
"Hey, no problem." His eyes crinkle a little around the edges when he smiles.
She's about to say something else but she sees the blonde girl approaching them, so she smiles apologetically and squeezes past him. She can smell his aftershave.
Day 10: Secured Transactions
Two and a half hours into Secured Transactions, Olivia makes a list. Things That Suck, she writes, and underlines it twice. The first four come easily:
1. This lecture.
2. Secured transactions.
3. BarBri.
4. THE BAR EXAM.
She chews on the end of her pen thoughtfully, staring at Buzz Cut Guy.
5. Cute boys with hot girlfriends.
6. Model-perfect blonde girls with perky boobs.
7. THE BAR EXAM.
8. THE MOST BORING LECTURE IN THE HISTORY OF TIME.
Feeling her karma sinking, she quickly adds another column -- Things That Don't Suck -- and tries to remember she's truly grateful for. After several minutes of thought she ends up with:
1. Buzz cuts.
2. Nice muscles.
3. Only fifteen more minutes!!!!
When the lecture mercifully draws to a close, she crumples the list and throws it away. She tries not to look for Buzz Cut Guy on the way out.
Day 13: Evidence
Buzz Cut Guy isn't here today, so Olivia stares at his girlfriend instead, trying to find the flaws that must be there. From the back, though, there don't appear to be any. The girl exudes confidence even in the way she sits, poised and lawyerlike. Olivia slouches and scuffs her toe into the carpet, wishing her hair were honey blonde instead of nondescript brown. Later she sees the girl in the bathroom reapplying her lipstick, and the girl smiles shyly at Olivia in the mirror. Olivia manages a halfhearted smile before ducking into one of the stalls. Her stomach churns and she wonders whether this means she's sick enough to go home.
Day 14: Evidence
Hearsay still sucks, and the only remotely interesting topic is the admissibility of dying declarations. Easy to remember, fun to think about -- deathbed confessions, etc. Very As the World Turns. She glances at Buzz Cut Guy, who has a habit of leaning back in his chair and linking his hands behind his head. She can see a military-looking tattoo on his forearm when he does, and she wonders where he got it.
She wonders what it would taste like.
Day 18: Criminal Procedure
She oversleeps but manages to make it to class only twenty minutes late. She flips through the pages of her outline to see how much she's missed -- fuck. She's gonna have to get the exceptions to the warrant requirement from someone at the break.
When the first break comes, she sees Buzz Cut Guy reclining in his chair. It was as close to an engraved invitation as she was going to get.
"Um, hi," she says as she approaches. His face lights with recognition, which has to be a good sign, right? "I was running late this morning. Can I copy your notes on warrant exceptions?"
"Sorry," he says, his face becoming serious. "Can't share with latecomers. Promptness is essential."
"Oh," Olivia says. "Sure, oka--"
The smile is back, accompanied by a rich laugh. "I'm just messing with you," he says, sliding his notebook across the table. "Here, have fun. Good luck reading my handwriting, though."
"Mind if I sit here to copy?"
"Go ahead," he says, gesturing at the chair beside him.
"Thanks." She flips to the correct pages and begins to write, noticing that Buzz Cut Guy's handwriting is, despite his protestations, neat and clear. She's done within a couple of minutes and slides the book back to him.
"Thanks," she says.
"No problem," he replies. "By the way, I'm Elliot."
"Olivia."
He smiles toothily when they shake hands. "Where'd you go to school?"
Not the same place you did, or I definitely would've remembered, she thinks. "Hudson. You?"
"Me and Alex, we went to NYU. She's born to it, but I'd rather be a cop."
"So why'd you put up with three years of law school?"
"I blew out my knee in the Gulf a few years back. Doesn't bother me most of the time, but it's enough that the Marines won't take me back and the cops won't let me in."
"Battle?"
"Nah, jeep crash." He laughs. "Figures that I go all the way to Saudi Arabia to get into a car accident."
"I'm sorry," she says.
"Don't worry about it. I got a job with the Manhattan DA's office, so that's almost as good as being a cop, right?"
"Better," she says. "DAs probably won't make you do donut runs."
She knows the joke is lame, but he smiles anyway, and she kind of loves him for it.
"What about you?" he asks.
"I worked for the Women's Law Center a couple years out of college," she says. "It's what made me want to be a lawyer in the first place. I got a job with NOW doing outreach and advocacy with a nun who works to keep prostitutes and drug addicts safe. She spoke at school during my first year -- the work she does is pretty incredible."
"Public interest law. Good for you," he says.
She starts to say something else, but the lecturer returns to the podium and clears his throat.
"I'd better go sit down," she says. "Thanks for letting me borrow your notes."
"Any time," he replies, his eyes twinkling.
Day 23: Property
If no one understands the rule against perpetuities, Olivia wonders, why the hell is it on this stupid exam? Or better yet, why didn't people just fucking write their transfers of property so they vest within 21 years?
She doodles absentmindedly until her attention is captured by Elliot leaning over to whisper something in Alex's ear. His arm rests possessively across the back of her chair and Olivia feels a surge of jealousy as he gently strokes her shoulder.
Concentrate on the lecture, she reminds herself. You're here to pass the exam, not to find a boyfriend.
She curses herself when her heart leaps because Elliot smiles at her during the break.
Day 24: Property
Olivia feels someone tugging on her arm as she struggles through the mass of students to the lecture hall's exit.
"Come out with us tonight," Elliot says.
She tries to play it cool, but her heart is racing again, and her arm tingles where his hand rests. "Nah, I've got to study--"
"Forget about studying for one night," he says. "Relax. Come hang out. You know, like you used to do, back before bar review? We're going to get burritos and giant blue margaritas from some Mexican place."
"El Perro Fumado," Alex pipes up from one step behind Elliot. "They'll give you a discount on the giant blue margaritas if you wear something blue."
"I don't really have anythi--"
"Please come," Elliot says, his hand tightening ever so slightly on her arm. "It'll be more fun if you're there."
Long after she says yes, all she can think about is the flash of raw lust she saw in Elliot's eyes.
Day 25: Property
The alarm clock buzzing makes her head pound, so she unplugs it and hurls it across the room before rolling over and closing her eyes again.
Day 26: Wills
She borrows Friday's notes from the tiny redhead sitting next to her and keeps her head down so she won't make eye contact with Elliot. She only remembers Thursday night in flashes -- drinking four giant blue margaritas with Elliot while Alex sipped a strawberry daiquiri and Elliot reached across the table and gently brushed whipped cream off the tip of her nose -- sticking their tongues out at each other and giggling at the bright colors -- laughing until she cried after Alex dared Elliot to drink the table's tabasco sauce and his face turned purple -- bumping Elliot's knee with her own all night -- tasting margarita and tabasco on his tongue as he pressed her up against the wall of the booth and ran his hand up the inside of her thigh while Alex was in the bathroom -- wrapping her ankle around his while he and Alex held hands across the table.
She avoids Elliot by ducking into the bathroom at the breaks, but plows into Alex on her way out.
"Olivia!" Alex says, her face breaking into a huge smile. "When you weren't in class on Friday I got a little worried."
Olivia ignores the stab of guilt knifing through her. "I, um, threw my alarm clock across the room," she says. "I guess I got pretty wasted, huh?"
"I've seen worse. You should hang out with us more often," Alex says conspiratorially. "Elliot hasn't laughed that hard in ages."
"Maybe," she says, shrugging. "I'm kind of behind in my outlining, and I've barely touched the MBE practice questions..."
"I understand," Alex says. "Just ... if you ever want to take the night off, huh? Or maybe we could go shopping or something?"
"Yeah, okay," she says.
"Good."
Alex hands her a scrap of paper with two phone numbers scribbled on it; Olivia waits until she leaves and then tosses the paper into the garbage on her way out.
Day 33: Domestic Relations
"Why haven't you called Alex?"
Olivia jerks away from him. "I don't want to talk about this," she says.
"This isn't about me," Elliot says. "And if what I did means that you don't want to be friends with Alex anymore, then frankly, you suck."
"I can't! Not when--"
"Not when what?"
She shakes her head. "Look, Elliot, I'm not the kind of girl who gets in the middle of someone else's relationship, all right? So don't expect me to pretend that what we did was okay."
"I want you to understand something here: Alex doesn't have a lot of friends. She really likes you, and I love her and I don't want to see her hurt because you can't deal with how things are."
"And that night in the bar, that was your way of, what, not hurting her?"
"I was drunk," he says, like it's the most obvious explanation in the world. "Why does it have to mean something?"
"You're such an asshole," she says, shoving him as she walks away.
Day 34: Personal Property
Olivia spends most of the final lecture staring at the back of Alex's head and trying to figure out a delicate way to say "I really like you but I made out with your boyfriend while you were in the bathroom so maybe you shouldn't date him anymore, and by the way please don't hate me."
She can't come up with anything, though, so she picks up her pen and begins to doodle in the margins of her book. Whatever.
****
A/N: I wrote nearly all of this back in early July -- probably during my BarBri lectures, actually -- and forgot all about it until I found it this afternoon.