Title: My Favorite Faded Fantasy

Author: mindy35

Rating: T/M, adult themes

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Dick Wolf, NBC et al. Lyrics are all property of Damien Rice and are used with great admiration but no permission. No infringement intended on either or any money made.

Spoilers: Nada

Pairing(s): Elliot/Olivia, Elliot/Other, Olivia/Other

Summary: They both have a fantasy about what it all could be with the other. The sequel to "Cheers Darlin'" and "9 Crimes" and the final installment in what I'm calling my Rice Trilogy. An AU in which Olivia is married with kids but secretly in love with her partner who's secretly in love with her but now in a relationship with someone else. Heavy on the angst and on the meta with alternating POVs.

A/N: Welcome back and sorry for the delay, I had to go do a thing (finish my degree). I hope readers of the first two installments find this completion worth the wait. There are some out there who favourited those stories but not me as an author and therefore will not receive updates. So if you know anyone who might be interested in reading or if you wish to promote this trilogy, please feel free to do so with my thanks.

A/N2: All lyrics used in this story are from Damien Rice's third album "My Favourite Faded Fantasy." The lyrics at the top of these first two chapters are from the song entitled "The Box". (I apologise to Maestro Rice for Americanising the spelling of this title and these lyrics for the purposes of an American based story. In my notes I will continue to use British/Irish/Australian spelling because I am just that persnickety... :) )

Please read forth and enjoy…


prologue

So don't give me love with an old book of rules
That kind of love's just for fools
And I'm over it
And my reasons for walking away
My reasons for wanting to change
My reasons for everything are lost with you...

God, what happens now?

It was a good question, an obvious question. But she's got no real answer to give him. She can't believe she's put herself in this situation. She can't believe she's put her partner in this situation. She can't believe she's put her husband in it. Her kids, her colleagues. She consorts with people on a daily basis who are reckless with their own sexual health. Or with someone else's. She judges them, advises them, every single day. Yet how is she any better?

She always wanted kids. Always. But she wanted them to come into a stable environment, a secure home. When she fell pregnant with the twins, Elliot Stabler had only just entered her life, his unsettling presence causing her to very tentatively question her relationship with her long-time boyfriend. At that time, she'd been in the process of transitioning from one version of the pill to another, one that would release her from the ever-attendant headaches and fatigue. In the interim, a microscopic gap in her cycle opened up, allowing biology to take its natural course. The timing was…not great. But there was never any question about whether she would keep her babies. Olivia believed in a woman's right to choose, but for her, there was never a choice.

In the years that followed, she thought the twins would be it. She felt she could manage their care with her career and relationship. By then, she and Graham rarely slept together and not only because of her demanding schedule. They'd started seeing their shrink and she'd recommended taking a break from sex. She said they need to explore other forms of intimacy – talking, touching, kissing, hugging, snuggling. It was during this mutually agreed upon drought that she breathed an internal sigh of relief and quit taking her birth control pills. This meant that the one time she and Graham did make love, on the anniversary of their first meeting, they used an old condom that broke. And so their third child was conceived.

After that, Olivia relied on simple timing. She'd monitor her cycle and Graham would pull out before orgasming. He hadn't come inside her in years. Not until their honeymoon, which he clearly considered a special occasion. She'd been too wrapped up in illicit fantasies of Elliot Stabler to notice the change in their routine. A change that reoccurred once more after their return, throwing a looming question mark over the paternity of her child. Because being too wrapped up in the fantasy of Elliot Stabler was also what caused her to make only a minor calculation in her mind as she tugged on his tie, urging him to follow her to the couch on which their bodies finally joined. She'd just wanted him too damn much, that was all. She'd thrown caution to the wind because she craved his hands on her, his mouth on her. Him inside her. And it was every bit as incredible as she'd imagined it would be. Having his weight lying between her legs, having his mouth dip down and claim hers, having him come inside her, with her.

It still did things to her when she thought about it. Things her husband has never been able to achieve, not in decades of sharing her bed. She's got to not think about it though. She's got to not think about how her partner stood barefoot in his kitchen, wearing briefs and a grin as he made her a post-coital omelet. She's got to not think about how he put extra pepper in it without asking because that's how he knew she liked it, because he'd figured that out years before. She's got to not think about his slick skin under her hands, lathered with soap, warm water running in rivulets down his solid muscles and precious bones. She's got to not think about the scars she traced with her fingertips, the puckered mark where a bullet had penetrated his thigh, the thin slash where a knife once speared his chest. She's got to not think about waking up to see him gazing right back at her. Or his breath on her neck. His palms on her thighs. His fingers parting her. How he fit so perfectly inside her, how she'd never felt anything like it in her life.

She's got to not think about any of that because there are so many other things for her to think about. She's got to think about blood tests and sonograms and prenatal vitamins. She's got to dig out any of the baby clothes she hasn't donated, check whether there's still a bassinet folded up in in that dusty spare closet. She'll have to find time in her schedule to go buy maternity clothes she can wear at work. She'll need to organize maternity leave and check with Graham's mother about babysitting. She's got to practice her breathing and work out a birth plan and consider names of both genders. She's got to attend regular appointments with her shrink and her husband as they try to work out whether their marriage is able to be salvaged. And she's got to be home more, spend less time with her partner and more time with her family. It's one of Graham's few demands.

She told him everything in Elliot's absence. She had to. Once she figured out she was pregnant, she came clean. She told him about the night her partner found her drinking, the entanglement Charlie caught them in. Graham remembered it, remembered the fight they'd had, the yelling she'd done, the placating he'd tried to do. He remembered leaving without a word and not returning until sunrise. Olivia also told him that the night she sought out her partner at his apartment she'd been drinking, but that she wasn't drunk. It wasn't the drink that made her go to him, slap him, kiss him, repeatedly take him into her body. That was all her. Her husband took it characteristically well. He'd risen from his seat, walked toward her and taken her shoulders in his hands. He'd kissed her forehead and told her they'd get through it together. Dropping his hands, he'd said he didn't want her working with Elliot anymore. He said she should request a new partner, for everyone's sake. His numerous indiscretions with colleagues he still worked with meant he couldn't push this point though.

For this, Olivia was mildly grateful. She knows it's still possible that this will be the end for her and Elliot. Whether she's carrying his baby or not. She's put him in an awful, unthinkable position. She feels ashamed of her erratic, irresponsible behavior. She feels ashamed of the claim she felt over him, of the jealousy that arose when she saw him happy with another woman, his arm around her shoulders, his lips on hers. She feels ashamed that the strain of her denied attraction and entitled silence caused her to buy a bottle of cheap vodka and sit alone in her car, drinking from a police issue mug. She's ashamed that she couldn't bring herself to talk to her partner about what she was feeling. But that, like the teenage brat she'd thought she'd long grown out of, she'd used her fists instead.

There – oddly – her sense of shame does stop. Or, at least, suspend. She is, of course, ashamed to have betrayed her partner's friendship, her husband's trust, her children's innocence and her own better judgement with her actions that night. But she's not ashamed of her actions in and of themselves. And that is a minor relief. Because the shame comes back in, swift and strong and merciless, if she thinks about how she left his bed. About how she couldn't answer her phone or hear his voice or speak to him until she'd cleared her head, got some distance. Part of her was relieved when he disappeared, another part angry, another part confused, another concerned. She certainly didn't expect him to desert her for so long, didn't know what to make of his continued absence and silence. By the time he returned, she was so utterly exhausted, so twisted up in knots from trying to figure out what on earth he was thinking, feeling, doing out there in Virginia, that she couldn't face him alone. She knew what she had to do, she just couldn't do it. So she took the coward's way out, delivering the news of her pregnancy in front of their colleagues.

She was only postponing the inevitable by minutes. She knew she'd have to be alone with him again, she'd have to face him one-on-one at some point. Especially if she wanted to remain his partner. Which she did. For however long he'd have her. For however long they'd be permitted to maintain a professional alliance. As they finally face each other though, once again alone, the tart, cold air of the precinct bathroom sitting thick about them, she feels woefully unprepared. She should've been planning this conversation for weeks, she should have been devising a half decent response to his very simple, very legitimate question. She wrote several dozen lists while he was at Quantico. She listed all the things she needed to do, all the things she needed to consider – other than him. The trash can by their desks is currently crammed with scrunched up, discarded lists, none of which even mention his name. None of which give her any sort of clue as to how to answer his question.

So Olivia just shakes her head, hoping her partner can forgive her for her silence.

TBC...