1MissMandi collab ;)
Like the writers of SVU, we are not providing any continuity in this series. Each story is a stand-alone fix of what happened in that episode. AU. Set during Screwed.
Disclaimer: If we owned them, the show would be on HBO because we're a couple of dirty whores. Right, Mandi?
"Kathy's pregnant," he says it, but it's like a whisper. Like it got lost in the sounds of the people around her, but she thinks that's wrong because this courthouse is so damn big and she feels so minuscule. The shattering of her heart is superseded by the crimes and the consequences that are determined in this place. His crime - killing her spirit - is forgotten amongst the crowd. Her ruptured fortitude, unimportant. To Olivia, his words are too loud, so loud, as if she wasn't the only one who was supposed to hear it. As if Elliot wants everyone to know he'll be a father again, he'll be Kathy's again. He won't be hers.
Ever.
She responds, he analyzes, she responds, he analyzes. There's too much talking, yet not enough exchange.
When Braden tells her he won't be needing her in court, she thanks God that she isn't stuck. With him. With him and his nauseatingly "good" news.
[]
She drinks that night. Vodka. Her poison.
Olivia thinks about calling Dean Porter back. There's so much with him. Not enough with her partner. But maybe that's what was meant to be. Dean is her Elliot. The new Elliot. She can count on him. She can. She won't fall in love with him because she tells herself not to. Because with her luck, he has an ex-wife that he's not over and he too will go back to her, and Olivia will be alone. Again.
Not tonight, she concludes. She can only handle her self-loathing one solitary shot at a time.
[]
When Olivia sits in front of Internal Affairs, tells them about her fugitive brother, she thinks about taking a trip. She wants to go to Alaska. To see Mount McKinley. But it's too far from New York. From her home. From Elliot. So she doesn't.
Even as she flails from his flagrant indifference to her, she is still grounded to him.
[]
On the first day of her suspension, she sleeps with Porter. She keens and moans and he groans and comes. They are sweaty, messy, but uncomplicated. He swallows the dread inside her. For the moment.
When he calls her again, she musters up an alibi.
"What, do you love him?" Dean questions.
"Yes," comes automatically.
Afterwards, she grabs the box of blond hair dye she bought months ago from her shelf. Its corners are yellowed with age. Fuck it, she thinks, and she nearly shaves her head instead.
Later, Elliot calls her and asks her to dinner. He tells her Kathy has an appointment on Friday. He isn't going with her, though. She tells him she'll meet him at Cuba on Saturday.
She is hesitant because she gave him the space he needed before and he, in turn, left her to disassemble in her own.
When they're at the restaurant, he talks. He seems happy. So fucking happy. Because he has his wife again.
Elliot surprises her when they reach her building to say goodnight. He kisses her, and it lasts two seconds, but she doesn't care because he's got a wife now and he shouldn't be kissing someone who's not his wife. His lips devour her dreams.
[]
Elliot still hasn't moved home a month after his wife asks him to move back. He still lives at his apartment, but he goes with Kathy to her next appointment.
He calls Olivia and tells her he has news. He doesn't say if it's good or bad. She tells herself it's good. For him. Maybe he's finally moving home. Maybe he and Kathy are renewing their vows. Maybe it's twins.
Fantastic.
She opens her apartment door that night when Elliot shows up. When she looks at him, lets him in, she realizes he doesn't look like Dean. His shoulders are broader, he has more muscle. He's not Dean. So she thinks that Dean isn't her new Elliot because they are nothing alike.
"I'm not moving home," he blurts out and she uses the wall to brace herself.
"What? Why not? I thought you were...you can't not...that baby…it needs its father." She is ashamed at the dejection in her voice. "You have a second chance. You love your wife. You love your baby," and she realizes she's rambling and chanting her personal mantra out loud for the first time in weeks.
"There is no baby," he says quietly, and it's so quiet she barely hears it. "Kathy didn't let me come to her first appointment. She tried so hard to keep me from coming to her second one."
Olivia wants to ask why, but she thinks she knows. But she doesn't, so she lets him finish. Her questioning has backfired before. She tightens.
"They told me. They asked her why she didn't show up at her first appointment. I didn't know."
When she looks over at Elliot, she notices for the first time that he's on her couch.
He continues, and the room is spinning when he finally gets to his point. "It was a false positive. She's not pregnant. There is no baby."
"I'm sorry," because it's all she can say.
[]
Two weeks later, at the tip of his doorstep, Elliot kisses her again. It's so unexpected, but she allows it, kisses him back.
Sadness turns to trust in the blink of an eye. He leans into her, urging her though his door. His apology arises out of his lungs and pushes into her gaping mouth and she inhales. She inhales.
Like oil to a rusty metal joint, his lips kick start her heart. She feels the warmth of her blood coursing into her extremities. The numbness begins to dissolve.
Here in the quiet of the entryway, she is reborn.
She pulls back, studies the history of his face. The lines of worry and panic have yet to fade, but he is still her Elliot. The old Elliot.
"What is this?" she whispers. Balance is fleeting.
He just shakes his head. Explanations are for stronger men.
She wants to forget the countless lovers that lie on her fingers and toes. Endless nights she hiked up her skirt and let a faceless replacement fill the void. She needs to forget the emptiness in the flow she curses every 28 days. She wants to stay away from the life and death of it all.
She feels like a dusty book that has sat waiting to be picked off of the shelf and wiped off. Her head jerks back cursorily.
"El," and his silence is telling.
"Enough," he growls.
He nudges her arms skyward, and she complies. Her pants follow her shirt onto the floor. There is a moment when neither of them moves. It's like they know.
No going back.
She concedes, and he tugs at her belt. Her pants fall to the floor with a thump, heavy and swift, like her permission. She stands there, breathing heavy, hands shaky.
His eyes widen briefly, never leaving hers. His hands trail the curves of her body, soft and supple. Fingers slip between the forbidden flesh and lace. He tears.
"Mine." And he brings the panties to his nose.
They fall onto his futon, a jumble of arms and legs and emotions. The fervor and rage and pain and angst between them sit on the coffee table, observing. Their zeal escapes in audible articulation.
[]
Straddling the sill, she takes a long, deliberate breath. He's sleeping soundly, and her breathing is cautious.
She thinks of his reproductions, his legacies. Of things passed on and things long forgotten. Had there been a summer to her long-lived winter, she'd have had her own replica.
Somewhere in the night, another soul has become perfidious. It has corrupted an essence of which she will have to console. She can almost hear the screams, deafening and overtaking the felicity of their coupling. Her head bows.
"Don't," floats through the reverie.
She tilts her head. She quirks her eyebrow and smirks at him. Questioning.
"Can't live inside your head right now," he murmurs. He always knows.
His form swells in the sheets.
She inhales.
"Neruda once wrote, 'Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you is that I do not see you but love you blindly.' It fits." She glances again at the New York skyline.
He thinks. She always makes him think.
"Except," he is beside her now. "Except, I love you."
There is no question.