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It’d started out as such a good night. The kind of relaxing night Olivia hadn’t had in a long time. Bruno was catching, Elliot was on modified duty thanks to blowing out his knee in a foot chase, and she got to have three of her favorite men gathered in her apartment for no other reason than just being together.
They’d polished off two full pizzas, the adults had shared some light beer and Noah had root beer, and now they were sitting around the living room talking.
Noah had actually been the one to start their questions game.
“Hey, El,” Noah said from the chair where he was playing his Switch. “Did you ever have to save Mom at work when you were partners?”
From his place next to her on the couch, Elliot let his mouth curl into a shit-eating grin.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Plenty of times.”
Olivia was about to interject when he cut her off.
“But not as many times as your mom had to save me,” he finished, reaching over and squeezing her knee.
“Yeah, Elliot was always accident-prone,” Fin said.
Then they were tossing out questions to each other, some serious, some silly.
Olivia hadn’t expected Fin to answer her latest the way he did.
“Off the record, Fin,” she said. “Have you ever hidden a body?”
“Off the record,” Fin said, taking another sip, “yeah.”
Olivia knew she couldn’t ask too many questions but she wanted to know the details. She didn’t expect Fin to offer more.
“For your son,” he said, his shit-eating grin matching Elliot’s.
“What?” she yelled, louder than she meant to. Elliot and Fin could barely contain their snickers. Noah looked panicked.
“Somebody better start talking,” she said, “Right. Now.”
“Noah called in a favor,” Fin said, “I dragged the body out, buried it down the block in the park. Got rid of the evidence.”
Olivia’s head felt like it was spinning.
“Noah?” Olivia asked, turning to her son. Fears of genes, Johnny D, and Sheila running through her mind.
“I had to, Mom,” Noah said. “Or everyone at school would have known I killed him.”
“Killed who?” Olivia asked.
“Commander Cuddles,” Noah said, with a completely straight face, but that’s where Elliot and Fin erupted into laughter.
“Commander… what?” Olivia asked.
“Commander Cuddles, the class hamster,” Noah said. “Remember I brought him home at the beginning of school for the weekend?”
No. Olivia didn’t remember that at all.
“I was cleaning his cage and I put him in his ball and when I went to put him back in the cage he was dead,” Noah said. “And I heard Uncle Fin say once he would hide a body for you, so I called him.”
Olivia narrowed her eyes at Fin who was still cackling.
“So I came and got ‘em and buried ‘em in the park,” Fin said again.
“I couldn’t tell you I killed him, Mom!” Noah said. “You’re a captain . You would have arrested me. And Uncle Fin said you had to keep plausible deniability. I don’t really know what that is, but he said it was important.”
Olivia groaned and ran a hand over her face.
“And then Elliot bought Commander Cuddles Jr. for me to take back to school so nobody would know,” Noah said.
She swung her gaze to Elliot. All three of them were in on the conspiracy together.
“Well I think that’s enough of the truth game tonight,” Olivia said. “Noah, it’s time for bed.”
“But Mom,” he started.
“Go,” she said. “Wash up, brush your teeth.”
Noah pouted off to the bathroom and Olivia turned her attention back to Elliot and Fin.
“Really?” she asked them.
“I told his teacher about it,” Elliot said. “She said the thing was almost five years old. It was ancient. Like 130 in hamster years.”
“No more hiding bodies and destroying evidence for my kid,” she told them.
“You’re just mad because you wanted in,” Fin said, swigging the last of his beer.
“Just remember, I outrank you all,” she said.
“You’d never punish us,” Fin said. “We’re more loyal to you than anybody.”
“Then don’t give me a reason to,” she said, cocking her eyebrow at them.
“Plausible deniability it is then,” Elliot said, leaning off the couch toward Fin in the armchair and clinking their bottles together.”
Maybe Olivia should have been mad. But looking at the way these two men loved her, loved her son, she couldn’t help but feel anything other than gratitude.