Title: Opportunity Lost
Author: mindy35
Rating: T, sexual themes.
Disclaimer: Not mine, you know whose.
Spoilers: "Closure (pt. 1)", "Undercover", "Closet".
Pairings: Elliot/Olivia, Benson/Cassidy.
Summary: Set shortly after "Undercover". Elliot knows what Olivia needs. But can he give it to her?
He's shifting a towering pile of boxes from the squadroom floor to the interview room when he spots them. Going back for a second load, he sees them still there, huddled in the busy corridor. Olivia has her arms folded across her chest. Cassidy has his head bowed down towards hers, trying to draw her gaze. Elliot picks up the next box and heads for the interview room. When he returns, he glances their way again. He sees his partner step back, turning her face away. Cassidy reaches out a hand, fingers grazing her elbow before dropping back to his side. Elliot averts his gaze, grabs a box and heads for the interview room.
He drops the box on top of the others, creating a minor dust cloud, and is about to turn to the door when his partner enters, carrying the last box of the batch. Her brow is furrowed and her eyes downcast. She plunks her box on the table in a minor show of bad temper.
"What's Cassidy doing here?" he asks, pulling a chair out from the table.
Olivia looks up, apparently irked to have her private thoughts interrupted. "What?"
Elliot points towards the spot he spied them. "Cassidy."
"I called him," she mumbles, preoccupied and pissy.
"What for?"
"What?" she mutters, frowning at his persistence.
Elliot presses on regardless. "For what? Business? Or pleasure?"
His partner shoots him a black look then rips the lid of the box in front of her. "Not business. Okay?"
"Okay. I just…" Elliot shrugs and takes his seat, "I didn't know you two were back on—"
"We're not back on," she tells him testily, "because we were never on to begin with."
She glances at the contents of the box then scoots it across the table to him. Elliot catches it with one hand.
"Liv—"
But Olivia has turned away, back to him as she rummages through the dusty boxes. "I needed to have sex." She lifts a lid and throws it aside with an irritated huff. "The last man to touch me was that creep, Harris. He had his paws all over me, his fucking tongue in my mouth and his dick pressed against me. He was the last one to— and I…" She takes a file from one box then slaps it back down again, her voice losing all momentum, "I needed him not to be."
Elliot nods a few times, leaning back in his chair. "What about your newspaper man?"
She turns, tossing a heavy file to the table without meeting his eyes. "I never told him about the assault."
"So I'm not the only guy you're keeping in the dark?" he murmurs, watching her move onto the next box.
Olivia lets out a long sigh, sliding a box to the floor so she can access the one underneath. "We broke up before I could get to it. And we hadn't spent the night together in a while anyway. So I…"
"Called Cassidy," he finishes for her.
"Yes," she hisses hotly.
"For a booty call."
"Pretty much, yeah."
"So." Elliot rises from his seat, hitching one thigh on the corner of the table. "Feel better now?"
Olivia stops rummaging. Her hands still, her shoulders drop and her head shakes. She pulls in a shaky breath then releases it. "No," she answers, voice still frustrated but barely audible now over the distant din of the squadroom. "I…freaked out. Brian was sweet but I couldn't…." She gives the box in front of her a shove and it topples to the floor, the files inside spilling. "I just couldn't…" she turns, plonking down on a box, face buried in her hands, "…fuck—!"
"You couldn't fuck?" he asks, earning a scathing look from his partner. "Sorry."
"Fuck you," she spits, eyes flashing.
"'Kay, well," Elliot nods once and gnaws his lip, "I deserved that."
"I just wanted…" she wags her head at the floor, hands spread as if trying to grasp something beyond speech. "I just…I need…"
"To take back control," he murmurs after a long silence.
Olivia looks up at him, brows creased in confusion and eyes shining with tears. "No. No…."
She doesn't finish her sentence. But she doesn't need to. Because he knows exactly what she needed, exactly what she needs right now. She needs a man to go to her this second, kneel at her feet, take her hand and lay a soft kiss each finger. Then she needs him to turn her hand over and kiss the inside of her wrist where her pulse beats. She needs him to kiss the bend of her elbow and the ridge of her shoulder as his hands slide slowly up her arms. She needs a man she trusts to sit beside her, stroke her face with his thumbs, support her head with his hands as he leans in to kiss her.
She needs someone to touch her with the sort of infinite tenderness she hasn't been treated with for years, if ever. She needs him to coax her lips apart in the gentlest possible way. She needs him to treat her tongue like the delicate inner organ it is, not like her innards are made of steel like she pretends but of real flesh and blood. She needs him to touch her, kiss her like it really matters. Like she matters. She needs a man she can be absolutely weak with, fragile to her core, so that she can begin to rebuild the defenses her attempted rapist so brutally shattered.
She doesn't need someone who'll let her take control. She needs someone who'll hold her while she loses it. And for more than a moment, Elliot imagines actually being that someone, giving her exactly what he knows she needs. For more than a moment, he doesn't inwardly deny that they've both thought about that so-close possibility, that they're both thinking about it in that same moment. They both know Brian Cassidy is not the man she needs. Or the one she wants. He is. He always has been. But the fact that she called that insensitive dolt to perform a service he couldn't possibly understand let alone fulfil makes one small corner of Elliot's chest blossom with indignant rage.
It's a familiar feeling. One that's been lurking there unacknowledged for years, since the first time his partner took Cassidy into her bed. He was angry with her then and he's angrier now. Because secretly he suspects that Olivia knows, she knows he'd give his right arm to be the man in her bed, the man she needs him to be. He'd surrender his badge for her, risk his reputation, he'd sacrifice body organs to guarantee her wellbeing. He just won't sacrifice his kids. Or his wife. Or his God. Because he doesn't know who he'd be if he did. His whole identity is wrapped up in those roles. And his integrity is defined by how well he plays them.
Father. Husband. Catholic. Who is he if he's not that? And what could he even offer her if he came to her emptied of faith, of integrity, of self?
Sometimes he thinks it would be worth it. Right now – he thinks it would be worth it. A rich exchange. His whole self for the chance to hold Olivia Benson's face in his hands and kiss her the way she deserves to be kissed. He almost believes he is going to do it. Take that step he's tenaciously resisted for a decade. His foot takes half a step in her direction. His heart begins to pound with just the thought. The thought of taking those two steps towards her, of sitting beside her, reaching out and touching her. Of kissing her. Right there in the precinct. Tears would fall from her eyes and he'd lap them up, one by one.
The cluster of anger lurking about behind his ribs stops him. After all – Olivia called Cassidy. Not him. She would have slept with Cassidy, been naked in his arms, shared her pain with him while continuing to shut out the guy who was supposed to have her back, supposed to be her friend, supposed to know her best. Elliot holds onto that knot of anger now gripping his gut, convinced it will deliver him. And instead of doing what he knows she needs, what he aches to do with every fibre of his being, he treats her like any other victim. He sits down on the box next to hers, a safe distance separating them, and asks if she's contacted victim's services.
Olivia sniffs in a breath, her shoulders stiffening. Face lowered, she swipes at a tear that dares to dangle from her lower lashes. Then she gets to her feet. "I'm already on it," she tells him, voice steely as rights the box she overturned.
"Liv…" Elliot reaches for her wrist, fingers curling gently about the skin and bone and veins and tendons.
She glares down at him, jaw clenching and unclenching. "Yes?"
Elliot licks his lips, not sure what he wants to say, needs to say or can even offer.
"I know, I know," she mutters before he has the chance to devise anything worthy of her. She tosses her hair back from her face, sniffing again. "There's no crying in baseball." She tips her head to one side, "Right?" Then she turns away, slipping out of his grasp and digging back into the dusty files.
Elliot shuts his mouth, watching her silently from his box. She hates him a little now and he really can't blame her. He made the right call, the only call he could make. He knows that, he's known it from the beginning. It's getting harder – year by year, day by day, moment by moment – to keep making that same decision. Yet it's also become habit. Choosing his family over his partner. Choosing five people he loves over the one person he's tried so hopelessly hard not to. Every time he makes that choice, a deeper sense of dissatisfaction settles over his heart. And he can't help wondering – if he's so certain he's done the right thing, then why does he feel like he just missed out on the greatest opportunity of his life?
Again.
END.