Fractured Legacy
A/N: I've always loved the Season 10 episode "Lunacy". Personally, I find that after the birth of Eli, Elliot and Olivia's relationship in late Season 9 and through Season 10 was noticeably more possessive. Elliot saying, "Like I need the competition," in Lunacy has tickled me since the first day I ever saw the episode. So I thought, for my second SVU outing, I'd try a post-ep. Not sure yet how long it will be, or really what direction I'm aiming for, but here's the first chapter. I do love reviews! Pairing is E/O, since that's all I'm interested in writing currently .
Rating: M
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Closet, Swing, Lunacy
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Dick Wolf, not myself. No copyright infringement intended, and no money is being made.
Elliot raised the highball glass of scotch in his hand and pressed it gently to the cut on his cheek that was now swollen, hoping the ice in the glass would bring a little relief. His face wasn't the only thing bruised since the brawl with Finley - his pride, his ego, and his reliance on the routine within his family that he had worked hard to build had all also taken a heavy hit.
Leaning his elbows hard against the bar, El swore under his breath. Olivia had asked him if everything was okay - even though she'd known it wasn't. He had told her about Finley having killed Marga, and she had immediately offered to head back to the precinct to book him and start the paperwork. She had told Elliot to go home, presumably to lick his wounds, but instead he'd ended up at this dive cop bar. His mental wounds needed more urgent tending to than his body, and he wanted to put some distance between himself and Liv in that blue dress.
Relishing the burn of the scotch down his throat, El tried to get a handle on the dust storm of thoughts in his head. How in the fuck was he supposed to go home, expecting to ever explain to his son that he had unknowingly been named after a murderer? Dickie had already expressed his disbelief over how Elliot could have given up on entering the space program because of family obligation. He knew Dickie admired the Colonel in many of the ways he always had himself, and while Dickie still had plenty of years to change his mind, El knew that right now, an astronaut was what his son thought he wanted to be.
But Elliot knew there was so much more to all this than just that. It had started before the conversation with Dickie earlier that day. Maybe it had even started before he'd introduced Olivia to Colonel Finley - but whatever the catalyst, El knew it was long from over.
Before becoming a cop, an astronaut and a marine weren't the only things he'd wanted to become. As his estranged mother had so desperately reminded him recently, during the escapade with Kathleen, once upon a time he had been interested in architecture, too. He could try and blame it on age, he supposed, but in truth, there were so many things that he had worked hard to forget.
Elliot had told his mother, when pressed, that all his passion had gone into responsibility. More accurate fucking words had never been uttered, to describe how he found himself married 24 years (minus two) at his age. His marriage to Kathy had been many things since they were teenagers: necessary, young, a struggle, busy, chaotic, routine, comfortable, familiar, and since they had moved back in together - predictable. But passionate?
Not since another lifetime ago.
When Elliot searched his memory for the image of himself as a passionate man, he found it somewhere around the time he'd enlisted. And, of course, he found it in his time at SVU. Nobody would argue that bagging human garbage wasn't his calling.
And yeah, when people asked (especially Huang, or another head shrinker on the job), he told them he'd always wanted to be a cop. But there wasn't a shrink alive that would pull the full truth out of him.
"Another scotch on the rocks?" the bartender asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Elliot looked down, startled to see he had drained the glass. "Yeah," he grunted, pushing the empty highball back across the bar.
He had wanted to be a cop, but only his mother knew, and possibly Liv suspected, that it had more to do with trying to heal his father's fracted legacy than it did with any kind of destiny. Joseph Stabler had been a hard man. Elliot had loved hm. Looked up to him.
Feared him.
Not in the way that he had feared his mother - her unpredictability, her wild ideas and need to chase the things that only she could see. His fear of his father had been much more palpable. At least his father hitting him had been consisten - and, Joe had never left. That was probably the only quality Elliot had consciously taken from his father, the dogged determination to stay no matter what, for your kids.
He could hear Liv now, in his head, telling him that his interpretation of that one was a bit off the mark.
Dick Finley had filled the fatherly spaces that Elliot had always longer for. He'd made sure that El's rebelliousness never crossed the important lines, while still encouraging him to chase his dreams. Dick had pushed Elliot towards the space program because he saw a passion that was already bleeding out into family life, and still believed he could save it.
Shifting on the bar stool, Elliot groaned lowly as the full force of his injuries from the fight settled over him. Fuck, he hurt. More cuts and bruises that he really wanted to take stock of right now. He finished his current scotch and let his gaze roam disinterestedly about the bar.
His hero, he'd told Liv. A man who'd been to space . . . and who'd killed a brilliant woman in some twisted version of a midlife crisis. Thrown her body away like a piece of trash. And then shook Dickie's hand like it was nothing.
And, let's not forget, had been in the process of trying to bed Olivia.
"Jesus," El muttered, looking back down at the bar.
He knew Liv's taste in men tended to be all over the map, but he also knew that she'd had a thing for much older men since she was a teen. Finley had alway been a womanizer, but El never imagined he'd make a real pass at Liv, of all people. How could he assume that of a man he looked at like a father? As much as he'd admired Dick, something uncomfortable had bloomed in Elliot when he'd seen the Colonel leering at Liv.
Dick, I'm married, had been his sanitized response to his friend's insinuation. It was an answer that said something - but really nothing. He could've said, I love my wife, or My family comes first, or even the most glaring lie, Not my type. But that would've been too close . . . and yet so far.
Upon introducing Olivia to Finley, El had responded so casually to her question about never mentioning knowing the astronaut. Not that she had a reason to be surprised, having recently found out El's mother was alive, after El not breathing a word about her in their ten years together. Like I need the competition, he'd said, after giving Dick a celebrity's red carpet introduction.
Competition? Was that really how he thought of other men who were attracted to Liv? El thought back to a few months ago, when he'd found out she'd been seeing Kurt Moss over at The Ledger. His reaction to the news wasn't entirely . . . typical of a platonic co-worker. The feeling that had gone through him was so unfamiliar, overwhelming. He'd known, right away, that he needed to see the guy - if for nothing else, then to smoke the guy getting Liv into a jam.
"Olivia has a picture of you two in the living room," was what Moss had said, as if that wasn't a fucked up introduction between two grown men wo knew the same gorgeous woman. Elliot had wondered if the man was accusing him somehow.
Not that Elliot hadn't been toeing that same accusatory line, staring Moss down while deflecting his comment about Liv's not telling him about their dating. And when she'd broken up with the guy, not even a week later - was that relief that El had felt? Or egotistical victory? It damn sure hadn't been sympathy of any platonic flavor.
Elliot took a deep breath and sighed heavily, remembering why Dick thought he'd shown up at his hotel room. Apologizing for asking Liv to dinner was really just adding insult to injury after he'd rushed the fingerprint through the lab. El's stomach had dropped out so hard when he'd confirmed his hero as a killer, that it was like the world had shifted on its axis.
Just like always, he'd gone off half-cocked in a rage. And just like always, he had ended up with the lumps to show for it. Had he chided Dick for assuming Elliot was miffed about the date with Liv? Had he attempted to laugh the idea off of the older man needing El's permission? Not at all. Dinner with Olivia is off - that was what he had said, before he began the process of beating the shit out of his one-time mentor.
When the full force of the day had finally started to hit him, there Live had been in that blue dress that fell too snug across her pelvis for Elliot to take, and those earrings, sparkling in the moonlight.
Lunacy. Indeed.
"This seat taken?"
Elliot realized just how hard the scotch was finally hitting him as he heard Olivia Benson's voice at his right shoulder.
