Tattoo
Fandom: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit
Category: Slash
Archive: Sure, but ask first.
Feedback: Yes, thanks
Pairing: Casey/Olivia
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Season 5 "Loss" et al. If you don't know who Casey Novak is there's not much in it for you.
Disclaimers: Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and its characters belong to Dick Wolf et al. No infringement on any copyright is intended and no profit is being made. All other rights reserved.
Notes: Sort of picks up where "The Dance of the Vulnerable" series left off, but can be read as a stand alone piece.
No one knew about her tattoo. Almost no one. None of her fellow officers. It wasn't like Elliot's: so visible, such a clear marker of allegiance, of values, of all he was as a person. Olivia's was private.
It had been a dare in college. Three of them all from the same dorm went together, chose the design and location and sat themselves in the chair, submitted to the needle. The first moaned at the pain as the tiny butterfly was etched into her skin around her ankle. The second watched the first and when her turn came changed her mind and both of the others left, walked to the nearest bar to wait for Olivia.
She had grinned and laid herself out on the chair, lifted her shirt and felt the steady pressure of the needle on then in her skin. It took twenty minutes and the tattooist hummed along to the Rolling Stones as he worked and she tried to remain still. It was painful but not the type of pain she expected. She watched him work in the mirror that hung above the chair, saw the design take shape on her skin, the bare tracing of lines, then the fill. No shading, just a simple symbol. When he finished he bandaged it, told her how to care for it, and recommended getting it touched up periodically.
She herself had only ever seen it in mirrors, caught a moment of her youth reflected back at her when she dressed in the morning. The only others to see it had been her mother, who had been vaguely shocked, and infrequent lovers. Some had hardly noticed it, others circled their fingers around it, trying to feel some difference in the skin, though there was none. She submitted to this, laid on her stomach as fingers wandered across the small of her back, tracing the lines of the design.
Later she was sleeping nude on a bed and the other woman sat next to her and repeated the ritual of touch that others had but instead of fingers she used her tongue. She started at the outside of the circle with the tip of her tongue then drew a flat lick across the wave in the center and finished by laying a kiss on each of the smaller circles inside it. Completely awake then, Olivia turned onto her back. She pulled the other woman up beside her and kissed her, wrapped her arms around her, held her to her.
"You never told me you had a tattoo," Casey said.
"You never asked."
"I never noticed it before."
Olivia laughed. "You were too busy before now."
"I never figured you for being interested in Taoist philosophy."
"It's a symbol of balance, I strive for that." She rolled onto her elbow and ran a finger from Casey's nose, down and over her lips and neck all the way down to her belly-button. "I did it on a dare in college."
"So you regret it?"
"I may have regrets but that isn't one of them."
Casey said nothing but started to edge away from her. Olivia drew her back and kissed her again.
"I don't regret last night either."
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