Chapter Text
It’s been four weeks.
Four weeks since he’d stood across the dark space in her kitchen and listened to her and looked at her. Four weeks since he’d told her he cared and stood there and called her family and four weeks; since he’d nodded and held her gaze, when she’d told him she wasn’t ready.
Four weeks since he’d asked her - what if things work out - with that same steady stare.
Four weeks since she’d backed away.
It’s been four weeks since he’d turned around, then, and murmured quietly about it being time to go, and gathered his jacket.
It’s been four weeks since Olivia had trailed him, as he’d walked slowly to the front door and she’d been able to sense it, even behind him. The hesitation in every step and the way he’d cleared his throat twice, quietly, before turning back to her and asking.
“Are we good?”
He’d asked her and - she’d hesitated, at first. She’d tripped over an easy answer to the question, because her answer wasn’t yes or no.
I don’t know if we’re good. I don’t know what good means.
Her mouth had opened and closed and opened again, as she’d looked back at him.
I don’t know.
In the end she’d looked away and nodded; and she’d let him lean in after that and tug her close. Elliot had gently - almost delicately; she’d realized, like she was a bomb about to go off - reached his arms around her and ducked his mouth into her hair and he’d been quiet for a moment, before he’d pulled away and told her.
“Good.”
It’s been four weeks since he’d left that night, and she’d watched from her doorway as he’d walked down the hall and away and when he’d turned back once, to catch her eyes with his, she’d thought maybe.
Maybe he was back and maybe she wasn’t ready that night but maybe.
Then, reality set back in.
They’d grown silent again.
Silent isn’t the truth, really. He’d sent a text to her the next day; one that had surprised her, with its openness and honesty, even if she had no goddamn clue what he meant.
‘I understand, Liv and I’m here.’
Here, it seems, is where they both get caught up.
Elliot had seemed eager, for a moment, to lean into trying. He’d sent her texts. Short ones, asking easy things. Things she had to answer.
How is Noah?
How are you?
I’m missing a pair of reading glasses - any chance they’re in your kitchen?
Then - he’d called her once. He’d called her once, almost two weeks later, when she was in the middle of a case and short staffed and dealing with the possibility of one of her own detectives being dirty; and it’s possible that she’d been hasty on the other end of the line.
“I - I - how are you, Liv?”
He’d asked her, when she’d said his name and it had been too much - too much, when he sat on the other end of the line, silent and patient and waiting. It had been too much and she wants him to call and she wants him to be here, but it had been too much.
She’d sighed, at that; and she’d answered him honestly and truthfully and maybe she was short, in the way she’d responded.
“I’m swamped, Elliot. I’ve got - shit, I’m leaving now, Fin - I’ve got a squad filled with new kids and cases piling up and - ”
She’d finished then.
“Can I call you? When things slow down?”
She’d asked him and he’d reassured her and she’d thought she would.
She’d meant to, anyway, that night. She’d meant to because she does want to try.
Maybe.
She’d meant to and she hadn’t and she’d told herself she was tired and she’d do it the next day. Olivia had told herself it was too much, for the end of a long day and then, when the week had been long and rough and the thought of talking to Elliot had taken her breath away; a little, she hadn’t called him then, either.
It takes her breath away each time, when she thinks about how big the conversation has to be.
She hadn’t called him back and she lets two weeks pass and she’s sure of something. She’s sure, because he’d looked in her eyes and Elliot had nodded, like he knew, when she said she wasn’t ready.
He would reach out, again.
She knew it.
When he didn’t, she hadn’t either.
—
He thinks about calling her every day.
Elliot sits, and he thinks of reasons. He makes a mental list of excuses - things he could use - to pick up his phone and press the little green button next to her name, and call Olivia Benson.
This DA you sent my way? What’s her deal? Is she single - Lizzie’s on the rebound and -
Heard the news about Fin’s award - remember his first day?
Carisi stopped me at the courthouse today and said something funny about Rollins and I -
He didn’t, though, and he doesn’t, still.
He just thinks about calling her every day.
Elliot wants to call her. He wants to call her and tell her that he’d lied, when he’d said he cared. He wants to tell her that he’d been too careful, too terrified to push that night and that he should have told her.
“I care for you,” he’d said and he’d meant it, but he’d ended it before he could finish.
He thinks about the press of her cheek against his and the way her skin felt; warm and soft and there against him, right before she’d pulled away.
Elliot thinks he should have stood his ground and told her then - that he didn’t just care. That he was wildly bound up in this love for her and that he’d do anything; and he should have told her.
But he didn’t.
Instead he’d left; with the brief press of her body against his a memory, and he’d tried.
He’d texted and he’d waited for her answers and he’d called, once, and he’d tried
Until she’d told him - resolutely and with conviction that the ball was in her court and Elliot had listened; then.
“Can I call you? When things slow down?”
He thinks about calling her, but he doesn’t.
Two weeks pass by after she asks him that and he doesn’t call her.
He doesn’t text her, either; even though he thinks about it. He thinks about the reasons he could call her and text her and Elliot sits sometimes, with his phone in one hand and a tumbler full of bourbon in the other and he thinks about the things he could say to Olivia Benson.
Elliot dreams about her at night - vivid dreams. Dreams where she doesn’t pull away, there in her kitchen, when he says her name. Dreams where she surges forward and breathes out his name and this time she says ‘yes’ to his lips on hers. ‘Yes’ to his lips on hers and his lips on her cheek and her chin and down the line of her throat and - fuck.
“Can’t even get her on the goddamn phone.”
He mutters it at his reflection this afternoon.
He’s trying - trying to shower away the heavy funk of an afternoon nap. He’d fallen asleep, his head on the arm of the couch; an old Knicks game playing quietly and he’d woken up, his brain foggy and his neck aching.
He stares back at his reflection; until the steam in the bathroom clouds the glass back up.
It’s been almost two weeks since Olivia told him she’d call him, and she hasn’t.
His phone vibrates with a text, and he looks down on the bathroom counter. He smiles when he sees it.
Church tonight? The boys would love to see you.
Maureen has invited him the last three times - to Saturday night Mass, with her family. He’s been avoiding it; and he knows why - because he will sit and he will look up and he will kneel and he will pray, but inevitably, his mind will wander, when the priest is mid homily, to that night again.
To that night and to Olivia and to the way she’d stopped looking at him, when she’d asked him.
“What if it doesn’t work out?”
He’s given her no reason to believe it could - abandoning her for a decade and ghosting her upon his return. Leaning on her when he shouldn’t and pushing her away, even; when she’d tried to ask him about those months after Kathy.
Maybe his penance is this wait; after all.
He finishes getting ready. He shaves his face and he heats up old coffee and then he sits at his kitchen island and he responds to his oldest daughter.
Sure, I’ll drive out. Dinner after? Carl’s treat?
Elliot heads to church with his family.
—
The Saturday night she leaves Pence Humphreys, Olivia returns to an empty apartment.
“It’s fine, Noah. One more night is fine.”
She eyes her son over the FaceTime call and she plasters on a grin. Olivia uses her teeth to smile and she softens her tone; softens it so that her preteen child does not ask with guilt in his voice, about staying one more night at his half brother’s home.
“I promise, sweet boy - ” She drops her voice low as she says the last part, well aware that her son may cringe.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Her child does not - can not; she insists, to herself - worry about her at the expense of his own childhood. She’s done everything she can to avoid this, always; and the last month and a half has set them back, she knows.
Olivia hangs up after she reassures her son one more time.
She’d expected; she’d realized, sometime on the drive home, to be sad. She’d expected to come home tonight and sit and maybe pour a glass of wine and think about the tragedy of a grand love lost to greed and sin and she’d been - christ - she’d even expected to cry again.
The tears don’t come, though, and she pours the glass of wine and Olivia sits and stares at her empty kitchen and she thinks about a love with teeth.
Olivia thinks about a love that was kept so close - so deep and protected - that even a disease that preys; chews up and spits out memories, couldn’t tear the imprint of that love from the place it dwelled.
A love so deep that even death couldn’t end it.
She still doesn’t cry.
“Jesus.”
She mouths the word quietly, as she tries to push Pence and that love out of her mind.
She looks around her kitchen.
It’s a mess - not the ‘we’re busy, and I’m trying’ sort of a mess; a real mess, and it’s a Saturday night and she’s home, with absolutely zero intention of thinking anymore about that sort of love, and she knows, somewhere deep inside her - somewhere deep and protected by herself - what she is doing.
She is not picking up the phone, if her hands are moving. She is not, she thinks, going to pick up the phone and she is not going to give in to the part of her brain that looks at a tragic love tale - one that is not hers - and lean into the instinct and fear of too late, too late, too late.
“It’s not the same.”
She says it out loud to herself as she picks up a dish rag.
Avoid and conquer.
Olivia starts with the kitchen sink.
The dishes get done - washed and stacked and loaded and there’s a pot left to soak - and then she moves on. The counters are stripped and scrubbed and then it’s the table. Noah’s books litter the space and his coat hangs off a chair and Olivia keeps moving then, the glass of red wine close by as she stacks and carries and puts away.
“Alexa, play - fuck - play Carly Simon.”
She hasn’t eaten much today - a hurried breakfast and barely any lunch; and dinner hadn’t been a thought, after she’d left. The wine creeps up on her slowly; flushes her skin and loosens her movements and she’d thought at one point that one glass would relax her.
Instead; she ends up here. Olivia ends up stripping cabinets and wiping inside; clearing out two baskets of laundry from Noah’s room and folding and stacking and scrubbing the toothpaste stains from the bathroom sink; and grimacing as she makes pass after pass with the mop on the floors. She works and works and works; works herself from buzzed and sad and empty, almost; bereft of anything but an echoey sort of sadness for Pence and Winnie Humphreys to something else entirely.
Olivia gets caught up - the small speaker filling the rooms with music she knows and she thinks about the goddamn romance of it all. She thinks about a man so heartbroken at the idea that he didn’t leave this world with the love of his life that he tries to give up everything else.
The man was torn apart because he couldn’t live without her.
She’s stone cold sober when she stops, suddenly, at a little past 10 PM.
Olivia stops; back in her kitchen where she’d started.
“You’re family.”
Elliot had told her that; thirty minutes after she’d walked through the door to see the one thing she was sure she’d never see. Elliot Stabler with her son - and she pictures it now; pictures his hand on the back of her son’s shoulders as they both beam at her, Elliot’s glasses perched at the end of his nose as they show her the art project he’d helped Noah finish.
“I care for you.”
Olivia closed her eyes then; and she can feel it. She can feel the ghost of his kiss; pressed against her cheek and the way his fingers had curled for a second, against the bones of her wrist. Lightly; delicately and he’d never touched her like that. He’s never stood that close and touched her like she’s that precious; reverently and softly; and he’d done that, and he’d said those things and then.
Then he’d stopped again.
She’d stopped him, and he’d let her, and maybe she’d wanted him to prove a point.
Maybe it’s easier if they’re just a self fulfilling prophecy.
“What if it doesn’t work out?”
It never does for her.
“Fuck.”
Her eyes open back up.
The same kitchen they’d stood in a month ago sparkles tonight. It sparkles bright and shiny, the windows included, and normally, she can just see the rise of the moon through the bank of them.
The clouds have taken over tonight, though.
She finishes a second glass of wine on the couch and Olivia lets the glass sit - sticky and filled with sediment, on her newly clean coffee table - when she gets up to head to bed.
She lays down in the same clothes she wore to scrub the apartment; too tired, suddenly, to bother changing.
She’s almost asleep, finally; when her phone rings loudly, buzzing and brightening up her bedroom with the lights. Olivia grabs it quickly, working through panic - not Noah - and relief - not Fin - and finally, a strange sense of inevitably settles into her, as Elliot’s name flashes across the screen.
Of course.
—
Elliot is decent at therapy these days.
He’s decent at therapy - he does the work the man sitting opposite him in the cardigan asks and he goes; diligently, and he sits and he tells the truth and he’s good at it, he thinks.
He’s good at it, but sometimes he’s better here. Here, in the middle row of a Catholic church, worn wooden pews and Missals scribbled on with little pencils, and his family surrounding him.
He’s better here; listening to a priest he’s only met a few times give a homily about Lent and patience and how sometimes; sometimes we have to wait for the promise of the greatest things.
‘I’m not ready for this.’
When his knees hit the wooden kneeler after communion, he reflects on that in his prayers.
A little too on the goddamn nose, but I get it.
He’s been frustrated; lately, he knows - he’s willing to do this, wait as long as he has to - forever, even, if she needs him to. He’s willing, but he likes it better when she’ll at least talk to him. He likes it when Olivia will pick up the phone or answer his texts and he’s stuck, here.
Her directive had been clear, and he’s waiting and he’s impatient, sometimes, and if he gets frustrated - then that’s his cross to bear, he realizes, as he reflects on Father Hassel’s homily.
Elliot Stabler is decent at therapy; but he’s better here, with the sunlight fading through the stained glass windows at Saturday night mass.
He leaves his pew at peace again; for a moment anyways.
“Grandpa - Dad said you’d take us out for pancakes for dinner? Please, Grandpa?”
He shoots his son in law a grin - mouths a quick ‘asshole’ at Carl behind his daughter’s back and then bends down and murmurs close to Kieran’s ear.
“I think we can arrange that, kiddo. Let’s say us guys give your Mom and Dad a few hours and hit up that place that does the bacon smiles and chocolate chip eyes?”
Both boys take off running to the grand wood double doors in the front to wait, as Elliot and Maureen walk behind.
It’s good, being with his family. His grandkids take his mind off of things - work and life and memories and her - in a way his own family never could and he tells Maureen that, when she asks him for the second time.
“Are you sure, Dad? We can all go together, it’s really not a - ”
He interrupts and shakes his head and tells her then.
“Go on, kid. Enjoy a few hours.”
Maureen grins at him; then rushes a few steps ahead to meet Carl. Carl - who shoots him one last guilty wave, as he puts his arm around Maureen’s back and they disappear outside.
Elliot starts to move, then; his eyes on the two small boys who it seems, at this point, are intent on throwing each other down in the small vestibule in front of the group of white haired women who do not, unfortunately, look at all amused.
He jogs closer; starts to call out to the boys and he hears it; the muffled shout of his name as he makes his way through the double doors and to his grandsons, finally.
“Elliot - Detective - Stabl - ”
The voice is distinct - he knows it right away - and as he shuffles his grandsons away and into the corner, Elliot turns to see ADA Dominick Carisi standing with a blonde woman.
An older blonde woman; one who is not Amanda Rollins and Elliot’s eyebrows shoot up for half a second, before he trains his face into a smile.
“You can call me Elliot, Carisi. Or Stabler, or - Elliot is fine. ”
Kieran and Seamus are shoving each other now; bumping into the trio again and again as Carisi introduces his mother to Elliot and tells him.
“We - uh, we stopped on the way back into the city - she makes a big fuss when it’s her turn for the fish fry and we gotta drive all the way up to Mystic and back.”
Carisi watches as his mother rolls her eyes and starts to move away.
“She wanted to do Mass with me since she claims I never come home on Sundays anymore, and she likes this church - says it’s nicer than ours.”
Carisi lowers his voice and leans close, as his mother crosses over to talk to the priest; still positioned at the door, shaking hands with the parishioners who have lingered after the service.
“She blames Amanda, and I mean, you know moms. Always jealous of the wife and - ”
Carisi’s eyes shoot wide at his own mistake and he trips over his words as he tries to apologize.
“Jesus - God, I didn’t mean.”
Elliot takes it all in, and gives the other man the small mercy of a laugh, finally.
“It’s fine, Carisi.”
They chat for a minute - about Amanda; and her kids and he congratulates him on the ring on his finger. Elliot pats him on the shoulder and he asks him, then, about work and it’s Carisi that slips without knowing.
“The last one - god, couldn’t have done it without Liv, you know?”
The two men walk down the front steps of the church, Carisi’s mother still inside and the boys are throwing snowballs now, Elliot notes, right before Carisi says her name and his attention shifts.
Shifts; or does a full fucking u-turn.
Elliot turns to the other man, and tries to keep his face neutral.
“I mean, I’m sure you heard about it, but Jesus, this was a tough one for all of us.”
Carisi bends down, then; grabs at a gum wrapper that had tumbled out of his pocket. He can’t see Elliot, with his eyes trained down and he can’t see the way Elliot swallows hard at the insinuation that he should know a goddamn thing about her.
“I know she took it hard, this one, but still. She doesn’t give up, does she?”
Carisi turns to motion toward his mother, who shoots him a quick glare as she rushes down the steps.
“Anyways, Det - Stabler. Have a good night, looks like I - uh - I’ve got to get going.”
The other man darts away and Elliot is left, standing outside the church, the wind whipping in his face as he tries to sort it all out.
Carisi thinks - he thinks that they’re talking.
Jesus Christ.
Elliot gathers his grandsons on autopilot, then. He drives them to dinner and he eats and he jokes and he’d told himself, an hour ago, that he was going to be patient.
That he could wait.
Then Sonny Carisi stands there - stands there, outside the church in the freezing goddamn cold - and acts like he should have any clue as to what goes on in Olivia Benson’s life.
Jesus Christ.
He loads his two grandsons up on Sprite, lets them order extra chocolate chips in their pancakes and lets them drown their meals in syrup and he drives them home; and he thinks about her.
“I’m sure you heard about it.”
“Grandpa - Grandpa can we skip showers?”
He grins as he tells him yes; plasters it on and plays along and tells himself again and again, as he sets out pajamas and yells about brushing teeth, that it doesn’t matter; what Carisi said.
It doesn’t matter that other people - people who see Olivia every day and talk to Olivia every day - think that they’re - what?
Friends?
We’re not even fucking talking.
Elliot hugs his daughter goodnight - kisses her cheek and murmurs ‘love you honey, anytime’ and he claps his son in law on the back and he tries; he tries the whole goddamn time to tell himself.
It doesn’t matter.
Stay patient.
He makes it forty-five minutes - forty-five minutes of the Billy Joel Sirius station blaring and his mind trying dutifully to think of anything but Olivia Benson and being patient - before he reaches for his phone, and brings up her name.
He presses the button this time, and calls her.
He’s surprised when she answers on the second ring.
“Elliot?”
—
Vienna.
She can hear it, in the background. The familiar beat of the song and the notes of the refrain. It’s loud, though, an old habit of his when he’s alone in the car, and she thinks for a second about asking him to turn it down.
“Sorry, I - uh - ”
Elliot answers her, finally, and the background music is suddenly gone.
Olivia gathers the sheets around her and sits up. She’s still foggy - still stuck, somehow; between that phase of almost asleep, heavy eyed from the second glass of wine - and the shock of Elliot’s name on her phone screen at this hour.
Shit.
She notes the hour - half past eleven, now, and Elliot is on the phone and shit, this can’t be good, she realizes. Something is wrong or someone is hurt and she asks, then, with a thread of worry in her voice, because he’s barely said a word since she picked up.
“Elliot - what is it?”
Olivia waits as she listens. He’s breathing steady - not wild or loud; not like he does, when Eli is missing or Bernie is sick - and she waits, as the concern settles.
It’s silent enough that she can hear it, when he turns the blinker on to switch lanes.
Elliot clears his throat finally, and speaks.
“I ran into Carisi tonight. At Mass.”
Shit.
Her heart starts beating fast, and Elliot is quick, as he continues.
“I, uh - I drove up to see Maureen and the boys and I ended up babysitting for a while, and it was pancake night, I guess. ”
She can almost hear him fake a grin then, as he finishes his thought. “I filled the kids up on sugar and left, and I guess that’s the perks of being a grandparent, you know?”
She has some idea of where he’s going with this - some clue in the way his voice had risen a little, when he’d said Carisi and some clue in the way he’s talking around the thing he wants to say.
He’s building up to it.
“But yeah - ran into Carisi and he mentioned you had a bad case, and -”
She listens as Elliot laughs, then - a half assed sort of laugh that she’s heard a thousand times before.
One she recognizes.
It’s the laugh Elliot does, when he’s processing shit and it’s sad and it’s quiet and there’s no mirth behind it.
“Yeah.”
Olivia interrupts him.
“It was, I guess you’d say - yeah, Elliot. I am - it was sad.”
Olivia closes her eyes quickly, then tells him.
“It was a lot.”
She tells him this; sits in her bed and pulls one knee to her chest and she tells him this; like it’s normal, somehow, for Elliot to call her at night and tell her that Sonny Carisi and he went to church together, and that they’d talked about her.
It’s quiet again; and she knows she’s listening to him think. She’s listening to Elliot think and weigh his thoughts and she knows his next words will come out exactly the way they do.
Measured, and quiet and sad.
“He thinks - Carisi, I mean, he thought - Olivia.”
His next words tumble out.
“He made it seem like I should know, Olivia. What’s going on with you.”
Oh.
She thinks about working so closely; then, with Carisi lately. She thinks about telling him about her trust in Elliot with Noah and she thinks about the way she’d talked to the ADA during the last week about her heartstrings and dating, and god.
She thinks about Carisi and Rollins comparing notes and making assumptions and then Elliot asks her again. This time he is bolder; more forceful than before with his words.
“Should I, Liv? Know what’s going on with you?”
Both of her feet hit the floor, as she starts to answer.
“Elliot - I - ”
He interrupts her then and christ. He was sad a minute ago and he’s still sad but she could hear it before, when he’d asked. She could hear the tiny thread of irritation that he’s pulling on, tugging and tugging and tugging on, as he continues.
He unravels it, with his next words.
“Because I have to be honest, Olivia, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to know what’s going on with you, when we don’t even talk.”
She stands straight up.
Elliot is irritated; she knows - angry and he’s keeping his voice low, but she can picture him. She can picture him - chewing on the inside of his cheek and scowling out the windshield, and it’s so goddamn infuriating, all of the sudden.
Him, putting this back on her.
“Are you - Jesus, Elliot. Are you trying to play the goddamn martyr with me?”
Olivia is moving, as she says it; pacing out of her room and into the hall and she’d been sad before about Noah being gone but now - now, as her voice rises and her own anger grows and she stalks down the hall, she’s grateful for his absence.
Elliot’s only response is a noise in the back of his throat.
“Well?”
She asks again and she can hear it, as his voice catches and he tries to answer. He falters, at first; tries to speak and there’s a loud honk of someone else’s horn and him, mumbling ‘motherfucker - not, not you’ and it should take the edge off, this traffic tinted interruption.
It doesn’t.
She waits and waits and waits for an answer and then she starts again.
“You know what, Elliot - when I told him - when I told Carisi about you barely being emotionally available, this is what I meant.”
Olivia shuts her eyes as she says it, and waits again.
His answer, when it comes, is gruff and short and she realizes she should have expected this, too.
“I’m outside your apartment, Liv.”
She opens her eyes and she takes a deep breath and she thinks - she should check her hair. She should check her hair and her makeup and she should grab something other than the exact same outfit he’d seen her in, last time he was here, in her building.
In her building, in her apartment; in her kitchen and in her space.
Olivia doesn’t, though. She just nods; nods to the empty kitchen because in the end, maybe this is how it always had to go.
Soft touches and soft words and soft eyes, cloudy with tears, are all well and good; but there’s a part of her that hadn’t realized Elliot had come home again, until a cold rooftop fight.
Maybe this is how it has to go.
“Come upstairs, Elliot.”
—
She’s quiet, when she holds open her door.
That’s the first thing he notices.
The second thing he notices is how fucking soft she looks; and it almost disarms him. Her hair is loose and messy; her makeup mostly gone and the bruise under her eye has faded.
It’s faded; almost gone, and he came here tonight to do this; to talk about this, but she looks so goddamn soft that for a moment, he can only think about retreating.
It doesn’t last long.
He follows her into the kitchen and she sits where she’d sat that night and she is the one that asks, first. She repeats the question she’d asked him moments ago, on the phone.
“Well?”
Elliot stops in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Well.”
She’s looking at him now; brown eyes narrowed and he thinks - he knows, he can see it; sense it, feel it, in the heavy tension in the air - that she is, it seems, ready to talk about this.
Ready to talk about them.
She’s ready to talk about them and it’s time; finally, to say some hard truths and they’re going to have to do it this way - the only way they’ve been able to before - he realizes.
Ok.
He moves into the kitchen. He takes his time; stops once he’s positioned himself around the counter from her and then he leans in, too.
Elliot starts. He looks at Olivia and some of that softness is gone; now. She’s got both hands curled in front of her and her shoulders tilted back, and her lips are pursed. He opens his mouth once; shuts it quickly and then Elliot runs his hand behind his neck and rubs, at the spot that aches whenever they do this.
“Carisi didn’t tell me you said that.”
He tells her that first and he watches her. He studies her reaction to that; and he digs his fingers into the back of his neck and he watches it, as it sinks in.
Elliot watches as she rolls her neck up to look him in the eye.
“It doesn’t mean it’s not true, Elliot.”
She’s so sure as she says it. Her voice is even and her eyes are on his and she’s so goddamn sure, as she says it.
He feels it, then. The lick of the flame; curling itself around him and he knows it’ll combust soon. He needs to move; needs to stop himself before he says what he wants to; and he turns then and starts to move around her kitchen. Olivia keeps talking, short and abrupt and it’s almost a taunting tone she uses.
Like she’s trying to goad him into something.
Elliot opens the cabinet then. He finds what he’s looking for; grabs it and puts it on the island and then he moves to the sink. He finds two mugs - the good ones, he notes, are all gone; loaded and put in the dishwasher, and all the ones in her cabinet now are old. Mismatched and chipped; short and wide and tall and he grabs two of those and sits those on the kitchen island too.
“Elliot - what - ”
She comes around the counter, and rests her hand on the island.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He keeps going. Elliot eyes her microwave first; then her kettle and he heads towards the latter. He fills it with water and starts the stove and then turns, finally, and murmurs an answer.
“Making tea.”
She shakes her head, but doesn’t stop him.
Olivia moves back to the chair then; on the other side of the counter. She drags the chair out but she doesn’t sit and he turns to her, as she answers.
“Fine.”
He stops moving as the water starts to heat and it’s still there. Still sitting; lodged in his throat and rolling towards the tip of his tongue and it’s out of his mouth before he can stop it.
“I’m not - Jesus, what does that even mean, Olivia? I’m not emotionally available?”
He takes one step towards her and he watches, as she leans her body in against the counter. Her palms flatten on the surface; push back against it like she’s about to push her whole body away.
From him.
She won’t look at him. Olivia is looking past him - out the windows; at the stovetop and the sink and he keeps trying. Elliot chases her gaze with his own.
He continues, when she doesn’t answer.
“I’m trying here, Liv. I call and I text and I - I’m trying.”
He wonders if he sounds as goddamn upset as he feels, suddenly.
He is trying. He’s trying to be there, and he’s trying to give her space; and he’s trying to show her and let her be ready and he’d fucked it up, he knows. He’d fucked it up the second he left and he’d fucked it up the minute he got back and with each passing hour, it seems; he fucks it up more.
But he’s trying.
“I’m trying, here.”
He repeats it again; then he watches as she shakes her head.
His next words tumble out; faster and angrier than he’d realized he was. He turns his back to Olivia as he says it; as he reaches into her cabinet that he knows now.
The one next to her refrigerator.
“You’re the one that’s closed yourself off.”
—
She’d moved the sugar.
She’d left it out that night - four weeks ago.
She’d left it out for the next two days; after Elliot left. She’d left it out until Noah had asked, on the way to brush his teeth that night if they were making cookies or if she needed to add sugar to the grocery list and she’d grabbed the little white sack, then; and put it away. She’d poured it into the green sugar shaker and set it back on the kitchen island.
She'd thrown away the goddamn bag of sugar.
Now Elliot Stabler is digging through her spice cabinet, looking; presumably, for the sugar while he tells her she’s closed off.
Olivia stalks over to the middle of her kitchen, and grabs it for him.
“Closed off, Elliot?”
Her voice, she knows; is low. She can hear the rasp in it; hear the anger and the rawness and she hopes he can hear it too.
She holds the sugar out to him, and when he moves to take it from him; she curls her fingers around the ceramic and holds it tight.
He finds her eyes, then, when he meets the resistance and she leans in close.
This all feels - good - almost; like a relief. A pressure valve inside of her finally released and she keeps talking then, as they hold the canister between them. Her words come out faster; easier and looser as she continues.
“You’re not here, Elliot. You’ve been back for almost two goddamn years and you’re not - ”
Her voice thickens then; and she swallows hard and she can feel it, the wicked way her emotions betray her. She can feel the burning behind the bridge of her nose and the tears she has to blink back and she laughs then, dry and angry as they spill.
She doesn’t want to cry now; and she blinks faster, and tries to stop her reaction.
Elliot just keeps standing there; listening and he doesn’t try to interrupt.
“You’re telling me I shut myself off but you disappeared, Elliot, for ten goddamn years.”
She steps close to him then; her eyes locked on his, and she looks at him and lets him see it. She lets him see the fatigue and the anger and the weariness that has plagued her. She lets him see the hurt and the worry and she lets him see, finally, the toll his return has taken on her.
“Then you come back and I - Elliot, I never know if you’re coming or going anymore. I had to close myself off.”
Elliot opens his mouth; then, clears his throat like he’s going to say something and Olivia speeds up before he can.
“And then you come here, after everything and that night, here - and then you go silent again and - ”
Elliot shakes his head then. He keeps his hand there; holding the sugar but he shakes his head and his words come out shocked; angry and rushed and his voice - this voice; the one pushing back - she knows this one.
“Because you asked me to, Olivia. You - ”
She pulls the sugar away as he says it and Olivia starts to shake her head; fast. Elliot takes one step in and curls his fingers around the canister and pulls it towards him. His words are fast; angry and loud and they don’t have venom behind them; like they would with anyone else.
They’re full of something else.
“You said you’d call when things slowed down.”
His next words are quiet; come out low, his voice thick and gravelly and sad, she realizes. They battle with the noise of her kitchen now; barely able to be heard over the whistle of the tea kettle.
“Been waiting for things to slow down.”
—
He hates tea.
He’ll drink it, now - with Bernie, mostly; who’d done what a decade in Europe couldn’t, and taught him the art of making tea that tastes at least marginally better than the brews he’d sit and sip when he worked private security and needed to blend in.
He still hates it, though. He knows he’s a coffee over tea any day of the week kind of guy; and that will never change.
He also knows - assumes, anyways; that Olivia is a tea person. He’d opened her cabinets last time he was here; thinking he’d find the coffee grounds and make a pot and they could sit and sip and catch up, a little bit; after Noah went to sleep.
Instead - instead; he’d taken a risk and made tea and he doesn’t know if after he left that night, after they’d stood in her doorway, his shaky hands around her waist and the promise of ‘ok’ in the air - he doesn’t know, if she’d drank the tea he made, then.
They’re going to drink this goddamn tea tonight, though.
“Sugar?”
He asks her; let’s his voice drop low and casual, like he hasn’t just told her he’d been sitting around and waiting for her.
Elliot turns with the kettle in his hand and Olivia, to her credit, seems less inclined to talk about beverages.
“Are you kidding me?”
She stuffs two teabags into a mug and he notes that; files it away and then she stuffs one more in the mug he assumes is his. She steps back as he pours the hot water in, but she keeps her body close to his side and her hand on the kitchen island and she’s boxing him in, just a little.
“You - I told you I wasn’t ready, Elliot, I didn’t tell you to disappear.”
Olivia leans in a little as she says the next word.
“Again.”
He feels the tightening in his gut at that.
Elliot stays steady, as he gently sets the kettle down but he knows she can see it; and read it. He stays steady, but he knows his chest puffs up just a little and he can feel it, when his spine lengthens and he is trying not to react; trying not to go into full defense but - his body slips, a bit.
It slips and he clocks it, when she notices.
Just like he sees it; when her grip tightens on the edge of the counter after he responds.
“That’s - ”
Elliot is doing it; then, grinning angrily as he shakes his head and he knows it will piss her off, when his finger extends up and he almost starts to point, before he runs it roughly under his own nose.
“That’s a low fucking blow, Benson.”
His breath is coming faster now; and their tea is just poured into their mugs, but when he lowers his hand from his face and uses it to bring the mug to his lips, he doesn’t think about that. It steams against his face and it burns his tongue and he grimaces, as he sets it back down.
“It’s the truth, Elliot.”
She tells him, as she opens her freezer door. She reaches in the bin inside; palms two ice cubes and plunks them indelicately into his mug and turns back to face him, then.
He should bite his tongue, but he doesn’t, because his muscles are tense and his mind is racing and she is standing there; with her mug in her hand and her eyes narrowed at him and she doesn’t look soft tonight, anymore.
He says it; calls her out on the little bit of hypocrisy that even he’d admit, she should be allowed to have.
“We’re not talking about that - about then - Olivia, we’re talking about now. About you and me and you not letting me - ”
She opens her mouth; interrupts him and Elliot could always tell. He always could, back then, and he’d wondered since his return, if he’d still be able to. If he’d still know - if that instinct for her, would still be there.
He’d wondered if he’d be able to tell she was about to erupt.
“We’ve never talked about then, Elliot. We’ve never talked about you leaving. We’ve never talked about - god - about how you were gone for everything, Elliot.”
She stays close to him; her mouth slamming shut and god. Her eyes are narrowed; angry and hard and he knows most people would dismiss it as that.
They don’t see what he does. The way her hand settled against her stomach for a moment; and the shimmer, for a moment; deep in the brown of her eyes, that she’d blinked away.
“Everything.”
They don’t see her chin quiver, when she steps back and they don’t see how her shoulders slump just a bit, when she turns away from him.
Shit.
“Liv, I - ”
He has no fucking clue what to say.
She faces half away from him as she says it. She brings the mug of tea to her lips and sips it, and her nose wrinkles minutely, before she answers.
“I needed you, Elliot, I needed my partner and you weren’t there and I couldn’t even call you.”
He watches as she curls her fingers around the mug and this time, her voice isn’t angry. It’s sad and it’s low and it’s cautious; somehow.
“Elliot - it’s terrifying. You - this - ”
Every ounce of anger leaves his body when she turns to him.
—
This brand of tea is new.
She knows that loose leaf is better - richer and higher quality and she prefers it, but she’s also really goddamn busy.
She’d read about this brand in a magazine at her last physical and she’d ordered it from Amazon and tonight is the first night she’d actually tried it and - it’s bitter.
Not the good kind of bitter, either. Not the kind of bitter that settles on her tongue, earthy; with a bite - and leaves her wanting more.
Just bitter.
It suits, somehow, the feeling in the room.
Her anger left her a moment ago and in its place is the same hollowed out, sad feeling that she gets, when she thinks about herself and a beer grown warm, and Elliot’s unanswered calls all those years ago.
Olivia takes another sip of tea, and closes her eyes, and she doesn’t fight the grimace as the bitter liquid hits her tongue.
She opens her eyes when she hears him move.
“Liv - I, I don’t know what to say.”
Elliot’s fingers curl around the sugar shaker; and he passes it to her. Wordlessly, she takes it from his hand and tips it forward; a rush of white crystals sliding into her mug.
She knows he is - sorry. She knows he is and she knows he’s trying and she knows that this two weeks was her own fear; ever present and evident, for once.
Olivia takes another sip of tea and it’s less bitter than before. It’s still unpleasant; still too dark and too harsh but it’s almost right and she adds another shake.
“Maybe - god, Elliot. I don’t know.”
She doesn’t. She doesn’t know anymore she wants him to say.
She wants an explanation and she wants to know why and as she looks at him; searches his eyes with her own she thinks maybe she doesn’t want any of it, either. Maybe it’s too much.
Maybe she’s too scared to hear the truth, anyways.
She takes another sip and keeps her eyes on his and christ. He’s still looking at her, and when Elliot opens his mouth to talk this time - searches her eyes again and again until he sees it, finally; hidden in her own - he says it anyways.
The truth.
“You don’t think I’m scared?”
He takes one step close to her, and this time; neither one stops short. She takes a shaky breath in, as Elliot’s palm comes up to cup her elbow, and she looks down at his hand.
“I didn’t feel anything after Jenna, Liv. I didn’t - I went numb, I just - ”
Olivia tilts her chin up, so her eyes settle on his again, as he finishes.
“ - went numb.”
She nods, a murmur of understanding escaping and god, she knows. She knows what that numbness feels like and she knows now; after BX9 and Duarte and Noah - after her son’s life had been threatened - that she’d been close to that numb stage.
Elliot keeps looking at her, though; his eyes steady and piercing and he’s telling her, here. He’s telling her what he needs her to know; just like he had before.
He tilts his head forehead then; his eyes closing as he says the last part. It comes out low; heavy and deep as his forehead brushes against hers.
“I left because I was afraid of what would happen. If I wasn’t numb.”
It should feel like some great realization when he says it. Like a grand admission that stuns her; somehow.
It’s not a surprise; but it is a comfort, she realizes. It’s a comfort to hear him say it out loud, finally.
They stay like that; both eyes closed and when Elliot’s other hand tentatively finds hers; the one that lays flat against the kitchen island, she lets herself collapse a little bit more.
His fingers thread through hers and he’s so solid, here.
“Makes sense.”
She murmurs it, as her eyes flutter open and he’s so close. His nose brushes against hers and he pulls back a little; long enough for his hand to leave her elbow, and settle around her waist. He tugs her body closer, but keeps his head back enough so he can look at her as he tells her.
“I know - fuck, Olivia, I know it’s terrifying if we think about it but - ”
He blinks once; slowly and his eyes drop for a second, before they return to hers. He takes a deep breath; and it’s almost ragged when he exhales it out, and tells her.
“We’re going to think this thing through to its death,” he whispers.
There is a space, in her mind, now, where Pence Humphreys will stay. It was more than a case; the story of Winnie and him and if she doesn’t believe in fate and karma and destiny; then maybe it’s just a simple and grand coincidence that his words echo, so fresh in her mind, with Elliot standing this close to her; raw and open and there.
“Before - was logical. I was objective.”
His words stay with her and Elliot’s hand brings her even closer now. His hand over hers leaves and she gasps a little, when he cups her cheek.
“And I don’t think about it, Liv. I know.”
She stops thinking, finally, when she closes the gap between them, and presses her lips to his.
—
Two mugs of tea grow cold on her kitchen counter.
Two mugs of tea - forgotten, now; grow cold and stagnant as their kisses move from soft and slow to heated. Heavy and needy and crushing, somehow, all encompassing and everything, in the silent space of her kitchen.
Elliot used to have dreams about this. Her and him and giving in, finally; after a wicked fight. He’d dream about Olivia shouting and angry; voice pointed and loud and in his face and then her, frantic teeth and tongue surrounding him all at once.
In reality; it starts much slower.
Olivia gasps, the moment her lips touch his and start moving. She gasps his name and then she stops, her lips still against his, and her hand comes to rest on his chest.
“Elliot.”
She says it like she’s surprised; like she’s shocked that she’d surged forward and her lips had ended up here, against his, and he wonders for half a second if she’ll panic again and pull back.
Olivia doesn’t.
Her fingers curl into his shirt collar and the gasp of his name isn’t even finished, before she’s crushing her lips to his again and this time, she doesn’t stop.
Mouths move, slowly at first. His chases hers and hers chases his and he backs them both up slowly, so her ass hits the edge of the counter with a jolt.
“Shit.”
They break apart, teeth clacking at the impact and he starts to apologize. Elliot murmurs it, a quiet ‘sorry’ against her lips and she shakes her head. She brushes her lips against his as he repeats it - the ‘sorry, sorry’ starting over one thing and with each soft pass of her mouth against his, becoming something else.
“Sorry, sorry - God, Liv - I’m - ”
He says it, keeps repeating the words of atonement against the lush press of her lips, until she stops him, finally; with the sweep of her tongue into his mouth.
Her patience changes after that.
It’s Elliot’s turn to gasp, when she wraps one arm around his neck and arches her body back, so she’s flush against him. It tilts her back a little; so her back bends against the counter and he’s hovering over her just a bit and now; now the heat comes.
He dips his tongue into her mouth; sweeps it again and again and groans, when she catches his bottom lip with her teeth and tugs. She does it again; soothes the sting and he wonders if it’d be too much, if he reaches down and palmed her ass with his hands and lifted her, so he can feel all of her at once.
Olivia presses her hips against his and god.
Yeah.
He scoops her up; two hands on her ass and - christ, yeah - his mouth catches at the corner of hers, when she gasps in shock.
“Elliot - Elliot - ”
She’s got two arms wrapped around his neck, and he’s standing in between her thighs and Olivia has her hips tilted towards his; but she’s pulling back and he stops; responds quickly.
“Yeah - yeah, no, too much - we should - ”
He can’t open his eyes as he says it; and he can’t break away, but he stops himself. Elliot rests his forehead against hers and he feels it, when she shakes her head quickly. Olivia’s breathing fast; and she moves one hand to find his face as she tells him.
“No, god no. Don’t wanna stop but - ”
His eyes open to see hers slowly opening too and she grins as she brushes her lips against his cheek.
“Those mugs - the red one, it’s Noah’s favorite and…”
He feels his own lips curl up at that and he nods; his forehead breaking away from hers as he steps back.
“Got it.”
Olivia sits up a little, as Elliot grabs one mug in each hand and deposits them in her sink. When he turns back to her, he takes a moment. His eyes sweep up and down her, flushed and mussed and ‘so, god Olivia, so beautiful’ he murmurs, as he steps close again; into the welcome space she makes for him.
Elliot dips his head down then; let’s it rest against her shoulder, and they stay like that for a moment.
“I missed you. Every day, I…”
It slides out of his mouth, when his lips press against her neck and she nods.
“I know.”
Part of him wants to keep telling her; as he starts to move again. Part of him wants to tell her with each pass of his lips against her skin - about each day, he’d missed her. About his first day working private security in Italy, when it had rained and rained and rained and he’d thought about her and a baseball hat and his new boss had snapped at him twice to ‘pay attention, New York City.’
He shows her; instead.
Elliot’s lips travel down. His kisses trail from her cheek to her chin and it’s the first two years. Soft and gentle and it’s all the mornings he’d woken up and turned away from his wife, because he’d known he’d called out her name in his sleep.
His lips move down her neck; down the column of her throat and she welcomes it; anchors a hand to his at the edge of the counter and tilts back and it’s the next three years. Assignments all over Europe and him, running; and he tells her again, when she moans his name out as he sucks lightly against her skin.
“So much - I missed you so much, Liv.”
He can feel her nod; the fingers of her other hand cradling the back of his neck as he pulls back a little, and asks her with his eyes. She nods, and they both move; their fingers colliding at the hem of her sweater as they both work to pull it up and over her head.
His mouth returns to her then and it’s more frantic; more desperate now as he tugs at the neckline of her camisole. Elliot pulls it down, and lowers his mouth again to her skin and moves with his lips and his tongue down, over the swell of a breast and the soft cotton of her bra and it’s the next three years.
“Elliot, El.”
When he dips his thumb into the cup of her bra and tugs it down; tongue swirling around the hard bud of a nipple, it’s every day he’d shown up to work and looked to his left on a city street in Rome and seen someone else.
Olivia breathes out his name, holds him close and opens herself up more. He dips her back, moves his mouth back up and finds her lips again with his and their kisses this time are greedy, finally. It’s the last two years in Rome - when he’d told himself he was happy, and still had to pray every Sunday for peace.
She drags her mouth against; fingers curling into his shirt as she slides off the counter. They kiss again, and it’s Olivia that starts to lead them. They move; tongues and lips and teeth moving too, through the doorway and into her living room and he’d breathes out the word, once, a question.
“Bedroom?”
She shakes her head, breathes out a ‘too far’ in between heated kisses, and pulls him to the couch with her. They break apart, when his calves hit the edge of her couch, and there is an awkward moment, both of them standing; fingers entwined, her breasts spilling half out of her bra, and his cock straining against the seam of his pants. Both their eyes open and take it in and he knows he’s breathing so hard, when she bites her lip and looks at him.
It had been flowing, until now; both of them riding the aftermath of an emotional reckoning, but now, reality sets in in the soft glow of her lamps.
There’s more they need to say.
Before this.
“I - Liv.”
She nods, as she adjusts herself. Olivia pulls her camisole back up and adjusts her bra and she keeps one hand on his chest, after. She closes her eyes and rests her head against his shoulder and they both slow their breathing, as his hands find her waist.
Later, when they move apart and reheat mugs of tea - “in the microwave?” - and they talk, side by side at her counter again, she surprises him.
“Stay, Elliot?”
His hand has been resting on her lower back, and it tightens; flattens against her as he nods.
They finish; their bitter tea turned too sweet with sugar, and they spend their night in her bed. They sleep in waves; waking up to the ebb and flow of mouths meeting again and again and again, until the sun peeks through her curtains and the day dawns, finally.