So I wrote a thing! This is the result of I don't know how many different conversations and requests- people who wanted smut, wanted EO, wanted something happy, etc. etc. Hopefully I'll be able to please most of you.
This is a one-shot and yes, I'm serious about that. You will see it has an ending, and that's it. Finished. You don't have to have read anything else I've ever written to understand this. It's set post-S16 and Elliot and Olivia are finally together "for good" after a long on again, off again relationship. That is literally all the background you need.
*But*, if you've read After All, some of this may sound suspiciously familiar- and that's on purpose. Consider this a prequel- a deleted scene, if you will- because it can be read that way (one of my requests was to write the story of how Little Bean came to be, but only if Elliot was The Boyfriend). Which he may be...we don't know yet. Thus why this is an 'outtake' rather than part of After All itself. :)
A/N: This is about the most scandalous thing I've ever written in this fandom as far as sexual content goes, so if that's not for you, turn away now. A short mention of a past sexual assault, but nothing overly graphic. Alert readers will spot a few hidden TG references. That's about it. This is honestly pretty happy. Ish. Title and quotes from because the night by patti smith.
Alrighty then, I'm going to go back to writing sad people now. Too much happiness starts to make me nervous. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Hit me up here or on twitter.
{c'mon now, try and understand
the way I feel under your command}
"Goodnight, my sweet boy."
"Ni-night," Noah mumbles, eyes closed and on the brink of sleep as you give him one more kiss on the top of his head. You nod to Elliot, who gets up from where he's been sitting next to Noah and follows you to the door.
Your normal bedtime ritual is much more streamlined- a story, goodnight kisses, and then into the crib he goes. But tonight the crib is packed away with every other piece of furniture you own, save for the queen-sized mattress on the floor that Noah's sleeping on, so the two of you had stayed and snuggled with him until you were sure he'd be able to drift off in this unfamiliar bed.
Tomorrow night will be the first that your little family will spend in your new apartment. A place that's truly yours, yours and Elliot's and Noah's, along with any other babies that may eventually come your way. But for now, it's one more night in the 'old place'. The one you originally moved into with Brian almost two years ago but have come to outgrow, both mentally and physically.
It's time for a change and you couldn't be more excited.
"Hey," Elliot says in a low voice, reaching out for your wrist.
You smile to yourself in anticipation but don't turn around to look at him. "Hmm?"
"I know what you're doing."
"Oh, do you? That's nice."
He keeps one hand on your wrist and wraps his free arm around your waist, pulling you back a step until you're flush against him. "You've been driving me out of my goddamn mind all day."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," you say, trying to keep the smirk out of your voice.
With your hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, you can feel his breath tickling the little hairs on the nape of your neck. "Looking that fuckin' good when you know I can't do anything about it."
"I didn't hear you telling me to go change."
"Would that have worked?"
"What do you think?" You glance down at yourself, your bare feet and tank top/shorts combo you usually reserve for the gym. You're not wearing makeup and you've been sweating since you got out of the shower this morning. The notion that anyone other than Elliot would find you even remotely attractive right now is ridiculous, but you know him. He likes it when you look just a little bit wrecked.
His hand slips under your shirt, palm flat against your stomach. "I think you were hoping I'd drag you into the bathroom and fuck you."
"Maureen and Dickie were here all day. Nick and Amanda were here," you add, unsure which one of those four catching you in the act would be the most embarrassing. Probably Nick. The others would at least let you hold onto some of your dignity by pretending it never happened.
"Exactly. You knew I couldn't," and you can feel his dick hardening as it's pressed against your ass, "until now."
"Who said anything about now? I'm sweaty and tired and maybe I just want to take a shower and go to bed-" You gasp softly as his hand travels below the waistband of your shorts, fingertips brushing over you through the fabric of your underwear.
"How long?"
"What?"
"I know you." He's careful not to touch your clit, but it would be so easy for him to just sink his fingers inside you if there wasn't that layer of satin in the way and- "You've been this wet all day, haven't you? Just waiting."
You don't say anything, pretending like you hadn't heard him.
"Liv."
"What, are you not gonna fuck me if I don't answer?" you ask sweetly, knowing he's too far gone to walk away now. You've had him right where you want him ever since Noah spilled apple juice down the front of your shirt at lunchtime and you went to change into the light gray tank top you have on now. When you came back out it took Elliot a good ten minutes to stop staring at your (barely visible) cleavage, as if he was a 15 year old boy hoping to get an eyeful for the first time and not a middle aged man who sees you naked virtually every day.
He practically growls as you start to pull away, taking his hand out of your shorts and hooking his thumbs around the waistband. "These need to come off."
You bite back a giggle so as not to wake Noah as you step out of your shorts and underwear. Elliot lifts you up onto the kitchen countertop, peppering your neck with kisses and stopping only when you cross your arms in front of you to tug your shirt over your head. Your bra comes off easily after that, falling to the floor with everything else you had on just minutes ago, and then he's cupping both your breasts in his palms while his tongue travels downward in between them.
"Shit..." You lean back slightly, bracing yourself with your hands in order to grant him better access as his mouth moves lower over the soft skin of your stomach. He stops at your navel, the tip of his tongue circling around it, and you buck your hips forward in search of some relief.
He starts to chuckle at your eagerness but ends up swearing under his breath when you rub up against his dick, now straining at the front of his jeans. You reach forward to help him alleviate this problem and he wraps his hand around your wrist. "Not yet."
"But I want you to fuck me," you say, your voice tinged with a whine.
"Oh, I will," he promises. "Remember Monday?"
You nod, cheeks flushed even more than they already were. Monday evening you had come home to find the apartment unexpectedly quiet- Elliot had sent Noah to the park with Lucy- and you barely had time to put your keys down before your legs were around his waist and he was fucking you hard and fast up against the door. "God yes."
"Good. Cause that's what I'm gonna do. But I get to taste you first."
"Right here?" you ask coyly.
He laughs, looking around at your all but completely empty apartment. "See any better choices?"
You shift so that you won't have the bartop digging into your back as your legs hang over the edge of the counter. It's only recently that he's started being the one to initiate this particular act, and only after a lot of convincing on your part that it doesn't make you feel like he's pressuring you. Hell, it wasn't that long ago that you secretly doubted whether you'd ever have anything resembling a normal sex life because of all the shit from the past that hung over your heads. But somehow you figured it out, and lately you'd been doing a pretty damn good job of making up for lost time (at least, as good as you can considering that you're living in a one bedroom apartment with a light-sleeping toddler).
He nudges your leg until you've got both feet planted flat on the countertop, one hand running over the back of your calf while he kisses the sensitive spot on the inside of your knee, and your thighs automatically spread apart a little wider in anticipation. What you're not expecting is the way a cool breeze blows in through the window screen, the night air brushing over your skin right where you're warm and slick and- "ahh...fuck!"
"Quiet or Noah's gonna hear," he reminds you, but you can see the amusement in his eyes even though the streetlights are the only thing keeping the room from total darkness. "So you like that, hmm?"
"What are you doing?" You turn your head to watch as he opens up the freezer door, and goosebumps break out all down your arms and legs as he grabs a plastic cup from a stack sitting next to the fridge and drops several ice cubes inside.
You're already shivering as you await what's to come and he doesn't disappoint, watching the way your eyes widen and your lips part as he takes one of the cubes in hand and uses it to draw invisible circles on your breast. By the time he reaches your already painfully hard nipple, the ice has all but melted and you're squirming around in a completely fucking shameless manner, gasping for breath like some sort of fish out of water.
Next he leans over and repeats the motion on the other side before trailing the cube down your stomach, leaving behind cold droplets that make all the tiny nerve endings on your overheated skin instantly come to life. He stops just above your pubic hairline, so close and yet so goddamn far away from where you want him, and you make your disapproval known. "Elliot..."
He ignores your complaints, or so you think, but then without warning you feel that frozen coldness directly on your clit and it's all you can do not to scream. It's just the right amount of pressure, just the way he knows you like to be touched, except this time he's going to bring you to orgasm literally without laying a finger on you because it's sensory overload, it's too much and it hurts in the best possible way and you're shaking so hard that you suspect you'd have fallen off the table if it wasn't for his firm grip holding you down.
You reach for the back of his head as he replaces the ice cube with his mouth, soothing your oversensitive clit by sucking it gently between his lips. But he must've been sucking on something else this whole time too, sneaky fucker, because his entire mouth is icy cold and you're tingling all over as the tip of his tongue circles your entrance.
"Goddamnit, El, just..." You dig your nails into his scalp when you can't make your point with words, but once again he's not paying attention. He licks at you with long strokes, as if he's determined to taste every single spot his tongue can reach, murmuring to himself so you can feel the vibration of his voice against your wetness and Jesus. You asked him once what he's actually saying when he does that (not like it actually matters, he could be reciting the pledge of allegiance and you don't give a damn as long as he's getting you off), and he told you-
"I need to fuck you," he lifts his head up and says suddenly, unapologetically.
You're on board with this plan, sitting up and jumping off the countertop before you reach for the zipper on his jeans. He's good with his mouth, yeah, but you don't usually come that way and besides, he's even better with his-
You don't have time to finish that thought before you've undressed him completely and he's got you turned back around, nuzzling the base of your neck. He's as hard as you've ever seen him and you swear to God you're about to cry if he doesn't get inside you right fucking now. "Hurry it up."
"No. You made me wait all day. Why shouldn't I make you wait now?"
He's got both his thumbs massaging right above where the curve of your ass meets your thighs, keeping you from being able to convince him by rubbing yourself up against his erection. You inhale slowly and try to keep your voice steady because you won't win this game if he thinks he's gotten to you.
"Because this is your chance to get back at me," you purr sweetly. "Isn't that what you've been wanting, to bend me over the table and take me right here? Don't tell me you haven't been thinking about how you're going to fuck the hell out of me..."
That seems to be all the encouragement he needs to push into you without warning, grabbing onto your hips for leverage before pulling almost all the way out and then burying himself to the hilt inside you again. Sure, the two of you have had your fair share of slow romantic looking-into-each-other's-eyes sex, but he knows you like it better when he's rough with you and he's more than happy to give you what you want. He knows it's hard for you to trust and even harder for you to put that trust into words. He knows that, after everything the two of you have been through, this is your way of showing that you feel safe with him. And you do. Ironically enough, you feel the safest at times like this, when you're reminded that he could easily overpower you physically. Because you know he could, but he wouldn't.
And on a more primal level, you like the feeling of being wrecked, of being wrung out and a little used when it's all over. Even right now, you can sense the bruises forming where you're colliding with the counter's edge every time he fucks into you. You're going to feel that ache tomorrow, see the finger shaped smudges on your hipbones, and you'll be cursing your soreness when you're lugging boxes around but you'll still smile to yourself because there's only one person who gets to do that to you, gets to mark you in that way.
"Shit...Liv," he says in between breaths, words drowned out by your reaction when he reaches around you and starts playing with your nipples.
"That's- fuck, harder. Like that. God, yeah, just like that."
He rolls one of the hardened buds between his fingers, pinching it until you cry out. "It's...shit...it's our last chance here in the old place."
You grin even though he can't see it, feeling yourself clenching down around him as you let the thought wash over you. The idea of having a biological child was one that you had basically abandoned until Elliot had been the one to mention it several months ago. It started as a discussion of whether it was really necessary for you to go back on the pill now that you were sleeping with each other regularly again- because c'mon, you're 47 years old, nothing's going to happen- and ended with him asking 'but what if it did?' You shut the conversation down quickly. It was absurd to even talk about it when disappointment was all but inevitable, and you had Noah to think of, you already have a child and you should be content with that and besides, you're both too old to be raising another infant and it's just not a good idea.
I hear all these reasons why you think you *shouldn't* want it, but I haven't heard you say you *don't*, he told you.
He hadn't heard you say it because it would've been a lie. Yes, you still wanted another baby, wanted to know what it was like to have a tiny new life growing inside you. But you hadn't spoken a word on the subject in over a year and you didn't think you were ready for that to change now, not after when that last conversation took place and who it was with. It's funny, in the cruelest definition of the term, that one callous verbal exchange could weigh so heavily on you considering everything else you endured that day. «you actually thought you'd get pregnant? that's cute. after how many times I...if it didn't happen for us, sweetheart, it's not going to happen with anyone.» You didn't want to talk about it with him, just like you didn't want anything else that happened in that car on a dead end gravel road, but the fact remained that it had happened and the residual shame had forced the idea into the furthest recesses of your mind.
That is, until Elliot had to go and bring it up. You shut him down right away and, when that didn't work, you kicked him out in the middle of the night and didn't speak to him for two days. And when that didn't work because you were finally tired of lying to yourself, you showed up at his door and you cried and you told him (almost) everything and when you went home (together), the first thing you did was toss your remaining pill pack in the trash.
There's still a lot of uncertainty. He still doesn't know about the baby you lost in college, but that's something you'll deal with later. You're not going to go there for now. After all, both of you are realistic about this, you know that your odds of actually getting pregnant are about on par with your chances of being mauled by a bear outside the door of your building. You made an appointment with a fertility specialist because it's your best (only) hope, and in the meanwhile you'll just keep...practicing.
"Last chance, huh? Then you'd better- oh God- better get to knocking me up, old man," you say. He starts moving with more urgency than he had already, stops kneading your breasts in his palms and moves his hands back to your hips for better leverage as he drives into you over and over. "You like that idea, don't you? Then everyone'll know who I- shit, right there don'tstopohgod..."
"C'mon, you're so close. Come for me," he growls low in his throat from right behind your ear, flicking your clit with his thumb once, twice before you're coming apart right along with him. "That's- ah- that's my girl...so good, you're so good."
You let go of the countertop and lean back against him, pushing sweaty tendrils of hair away from your face before you turn around and grin smugly. "I bet now you're happy you didn't tell me to go change."
{take me now, baby, as I am
hold me close and try and understand}
He comes back a few minutes later to find you in pretty much the same spot where he left you, only now you've sunk down to the floor and are sitting with your back against the cabinet doors. "Liv, you okay?"
"What? Yeah, I'm good, just needed to rest for a second." The almighty internet had told you that you shouldn't get up and walk around right after sex, that you were more likely to get pregnant if you stayed put and let gravity do its thing. It would probably be even more effective if you were lying down, but you're already feeling your muscles starting to ache, and lying flat on a hardwood floor isn't going to make that any better. "I guess you're not the only one getting old, grandpa."
He sits down next to you and turns his face toward yours, giving you a chance to smell the toothpaste on his breath before he goes in for a kiss. "Might be grandpa times two soon. Maureen says they want to have their next kid before Benjamin turns three."
"Yeah? Noah'd be happy to have another niece or nephew." Uncle Noah has found quite the buddy in Benjamin, who's only six months younger than him, and you can already envision all the trouble that he and his nephew will get into as they grow up together. "Speaking of-"
"He's fine- dead to the world," Elliot assures you.
"Thank God." It wasn't until the initial post-coital haze had settled that you realized that for one, you were probably a lot louder than you intended to be and two, that Noah hadn't been confined to his crib as usual, meaning that theoretically he could've wandered into the kitchen and then you would've been stuck footing the therapy bills for the rest of his life. "And thank God for Tio Nick taking him to the park so he'd sleep well tonight."
"Thanks to Junior," Elliot agrees. "So you ready for tomorrow? Ready to get the hell out of here?"
"I don't know. On one hand- air conditioning. On the other hand, I'm not sure if our new apartment can ever have the...character of this place. I mean we won't even have any holes in the walls," you say, gesturing to the fist-shaped dent that you'd never bothered to have repaired.
He laughs, reaching out for the side of your face with one hand while he kisses the crown of your head. "No second thoughts?"
"None." And it was the truth.
"I love you," he says, his mouth still moving against your hair, and you take his free hand in yours and press your palms together, fingers interlocking. It was your silent signal that had somehow developed over the past months, your way of saying I love you too when the words won't come out. You do love him, as much as you've ever loved anyone, but you still struggle to say it in all but the most emotional of moments, as if there was a limit to how many times you could say it or hear it before it wouldn't be true anymore. So you let him be the one to say it, and you reply with your own wordless promise that only the two of you understand. "You know what I'm looking forward to most about us living together?"
You're tempted to make a joke but you refrain, because you can hear it in his voice that he's trying to tell you something important, and God knows he's only slightly better at expressing emotions than you are. "Hmm?"
"Not having to say goodnight and have it mean goodbye."
"But you don't really have to now...except for when you have Eli, you're pretty much here every night."
"Yeah, but even spending the night here, I know it's not really my home. It's yours and Noah's- and I guess sometimes Nick's, and it used to be dumbass's, and there was that one time that-"
"I get it, El. What'd Brian call it- Olivia Benson's Home For Wayward Boys?" He scowls slightly at the mention of your ex and you pretend you don't see it. "Anyway..."
"Anyway...that's what I missed the most about living away from Kathy and the kids. Being able to go to bed at night and know I'm home, that I don't need to say goodnight because we're all here and we'll all still be here come morning. Now I'll have that again- you and me and Noah. And someday, maybe there'll be someone else in there too."
You rest your chin on his shoulder, thinking about how there was a time when you would never imagine, even in your wildest drunken hallucinations, that you would ever have a conversation like this with him. And now not only are you having it, but you have a family with him, and tomorrow you'll spend your first night together at home. Your home. "No more goodnights."
"No more goodnights," he repeats.
You lift up your hand and press it against his as your fingers entwine.
{take my hand as the sun does set
they can't hurt you now
because the night belongs to lovers
because the night belongs to us}