Law and Order: SVU is the intellectual property of Dick Wolf. The use of the characters, settings, and plotlines is not malicious. This is a work of fiction.
"Okay, now carry the one and you have..." Olivia watched the young boy write down the answer to his math problem while she shifted the girl on her lap to her other leg. "See? It's not that hard, kiddo."
The boy looked up at her. "Quit your job with the cops and please come be my math teacher?" He gave her a puppy-eyed pout.
She laughed and brushed her hand over his head. "Sorry, spud, but that's not going to happen."
The girl on her lap, busying herself with spelling homework, said, "Daddy would go crazy."
"Yeah, Lizzie," a voice from the doorway said, and then the man sighed. "Daddy would go crazy." He walked over to the kids and Olivia, smiling. He kissed the children on their foreheads and looked down. "Are you all done? Do I need to sign these?"
Lizzie nodded and handed her scribbled script to her father. "On the bottom, please."
He took his son's math homework as well and as he signed both pages he said, "Dickie, Lizzie, man, you two are smart."
"Liv helped," the boy proclaimed.
"I'm sure she did, pal," the man said. "Hey, you two, go upstairs, put your homework away, and get cleaned up for dinner. Tell your sisters to come set the table, huh?"
"Okay, Daddy," Lizzie said, hopping down off of Olivia's lap. She slapped her brother in the arm. "You're it!" she yelled, running toward the stairs.
Olivia smiled, watching them play until they were out of sight. Then, with a sigh, she turned to him. "Are you okay, El?"
He nodded, heading to the fridge. He opened it and grabbed a can of beer, popping the top. He let the refrigerator close as he took a sip from the can and looked at the stove. "What are you making?"
"Uh," she rose from her chair and grabbed her coat and keys off of the table. "Something I saw Rachael Ray make once. I didn't have a lot of time and she said it would only take thirty minutes, so I gave it a shot."
"Smells delicious," he said, taking another sip of his beer and turning. His eyes widened as he saw her heading for the door with her coat in her hands. "Where are you going?" His voice was panicked, his steps fast as he grabbed her arm. "Don't...I mean, you can't..."
"I...El, I..." She stopped, seeing the fear and desperation in his eyes. She took a short breath. "I just want to hang my coat on the hook," she said, staring at him, confused. "The second I walked in, your twins pulled me over to the table to help them with their homework, so I just threw it off, but your kids need to set the..."
"Sorry," he interrupted softly, loosening his grip on her arm. He ran his hand up and down slowly, and then took her hand in his. "I don't know why I...I just, uh..."
"Don't worry about it," she said, cutting him off and tugging her hand out of his. She closed her eyes and let out another slow breath, moving to the coat rack. She hung her coat up, dropped her keys into the pocket, and pulled out her cell phone. She dialed and waited, and as quietly as she could, she whispered, "Hey, Casey, I...no, no I'm not going to be able to make it. Yeah, work. No, you don't have to. I'm with Elliot right now, actually. I know. Thanks for trying." She laughed sadly. "Yeah, maybe. Tell him I'm sorry." She hung up, but stared down at the phone in her hands with a bittersweet expression on her face, wondering if she'd cancelled her plans for the right reason. She wasn't sure if Elliot wanted her to stay because he wanted and needed her, or just because he didn't want to be alone with the kids.
"Liv," his voice broke into her confused thoughts. He smiled when she looked over at him. "Come on." He held out his hand for her.
Returning his small grin, she placed her hand in his. "How'd it go with Tucker?"
Elliot rolled his eyes. "It was a bullshit call and he knew it. He just does anything and everything he can to trip me up. He fucking held me in that office for two hours...over a fucking technicality." He scraped his lip over his teeth and realized in the momentary silence that he was still holding Olivia's hand. He smiled, another realization striking him: he didn't mind. He looked at her and said, "I thought...after all of this...everything with Kathy...he'd cut me some slack. At least, for a while."
"El, you know Tucker isn't exactly human." She laughed and dropped his hand when she walked into the kitchen and saw his kids, not willing to attempt an explanation. Not when she couldn't even explain it to herself.
"He sent flowers," Elliot shrugged, pulling out a chair for Olivia. "I thought that meant he had a little sympathy."
She stared at his lips as he settled himself into the chair next to hers. Shaking her head, ignoring the slightly impure thought that had crept up, she said, "The department sent them, not Tucker."
"Point," he said, making a face. He turned his attention to the table, smiling. "After dinner, Liv, we, uh, we should talk, yeah?"
She looked at him, and then took in the sight before her. His kids, who'd lost their mother little more than two months ago, seemed happy as they passed vegetables and rice around the table, teasing, throwing napkins at each other, and politely asking for the salt and pepper. She laughed when a dinner roll seemed to fly across the table on its own, hitting Dickie in the head. She laughed even harder when that young boy picked the bread up off the table and took a bite.
Her laugh was music to Elliot's ears, and he leaned closer to her and whispered, "They wouldn't be...we...we wouldn't be this happy, if you weren't here." Slowly, watching her eyes, he grabbed for her hand again, under the table, entangling their fingers and resting them on his knee.
She saw something slightly unfamiliar in his eyes, something she thought she'd seen a handful of times before but was sure had only been her imagination. She blinked once and her gaze fell to his hand, holding hers, and she shrugged the feeling away. "You would've been okay without..."
"No, Liv," he interrupted. "We wouldn't have been." He narrowed his eyes. "I wouldn't have been. Why do you think I freaked out when I noticed you were on your way to meet that lawyer Casey set you up with?"
Her eyes widened and her lips curled into a disbelieving scowl. "Are you...you knew?"
He smiled at her, and with his free hand, he picked up his fork and jabbed it into a piece of chicken. "I told you, we...we should talk." He shoved the fork into his mouth and his eyes rolled. "God, this is good."
She smiled at him and tried to pull her hand out of his, but he squeezed tighter and shot his eyes to hers, shaking his head the slightest bit. Swallowing hard and nodding once at him, she said, "I'm glad you like it."
He nodded back as he filled his mouth with another forkful. He was about to say something to her when another roll whizzed by his head. "Hey!" he shouted, forking a carrot into his mouth.
Olivia watched him chew as he got lost in a conversation with his oldest daughter, Maureen, and years of waiting and hoping hit her. Conversations she had with him, fights she had with him, the bond and the chemistry she had with him...maybe it all meant something after all. She looked down at her hand in his again, as if she couldn't really believe it was there, and she let herself relax.
"This chicken is amazing," Kathleen, the middle girl, said with a bright smile. "Thanks, Liv!"
Elliot turned to look at her, then. "Yeah. Thank you," he said softly. "For everything."
She smiled and nodded as she finally took a bite of her dinner, and tried to quell the nerves flooding her system. She knew she'd be nervous, though, until her after-dinner conversation with Elliot was over.
Two Months Earlier...
"It's not...no, but I told you I was..." Elliot paused and exhaled harshly as his hand shot to his forehead. He rubbed harshly, squeezing his eyes shut. "Fine, whatever, I'm at work anyway, so...I know you're not. Okay. Kiss them for me. You, too, Kathy." He hung up the phone and looked over at his partner, who was staring out toward the flashing blue and red lights, sipping her coffee. "Cut the act," he told her, smirking.
"Huh?" Olivia returned, looking at him. "Were you saying something?"
"You heard that entire conversation, don't pretend you didn't," he laughed, sticking his phone back in his pocket. "I thought when I told her I wanted to come back home she'd...I don't know...hate me a little less."
"She doesn't hate you," she whispered, raising an eyebrow.
He took a breath and sighed, nodding. "You're right, I know, we just...have issues to work out." He took the coffee out of her hand and took a sip, ignoring the annoyed expression on her face. "It's why I'm still on your couch."
"If you want to stay on my couch and not out on your ass, you'll give me back my coffee." She tried to give him a threatening glare, but it was no use. One look into his eyes and she smiled at him. She took the coffee, took a sip, and handed it back to him. "How much longer you think this is going to take?"
He shrugged. "They're clearing the building," he said. "Anywhere from a few more minutes to a few more hours."
"And we just have to stand here in the cold, waiting," she grumbled, folding her arms and shaking her head.
He laughed and held the coffee cup to her lips, enjoying the way she eyed him strangely as he made her sip.
She licked her lips, furrowing her brow at him. "All right, thanks, Daddy."
He cleared his throat then, trying to stifle the images of a few vivid fantasies he'd had where she called him that, under very different circumstances. He took the last sip of the coffee and rubbed his eyes. He knew how wrong it was, but he couldn't help thinking of his partner, his best friend, and it's one of the reasons his marriage was in jeopardy. Blinking away a particularly hot image of her in the shower, he raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"I asked...uh, when are you going home?" she repeated, trying not to let on that her heart had broken just a bit when he told her his plans to give things with his wife another go. She eyed him, watching him think of how to answer, and the puffs of white heat coming from his mouth as his breath hit the frigid air gave her goose-bumps. She could almost feel that hot breath on her neck, her lips, in her ear, and hitting sensitive spots on her body. She bit her lip, fighting the fantasy, and waited.
"I'm not sure," he told her. "That's what the phone call you pretended not to hear was about. I was supposed to go home tomorrow, but she's taking the kids to visit her parents for the weekend. She wanted me to go, but..." he waved a hand at the crime scene in front of them.
She gave him a small smile. "Well, you can keep my couch company for another night or two," she told him, nudging him in the side with her elbow. "Eighty-six."
"What?" he questioned, tilting his head.
"That's how many nights have started off this way," she said, gesturing to the firemen finally exiting the burnt and smoking building. "Eighty-six nights we got called because something blew up or was set on fire, because one of our vics or a perp from an open-case was involved."
"You've kept count?" he asked, chuckling. He thought he saw her blush, and as he took her leather-gloved hand and pulled her toward the now-clear apartment building, he said, "It's eighty-seven."
"How do you figure...what did I forget?" she twisted her face up in a confused grin.
"Probably the Logan case," he told her, nodding once. "There were two explosions, there. I wish we could forget that one. John was..."
"I know what John was," she interrupted. She pulled her hand out of his, wondering why he'd taken it in the first place, and was about to ask the fire marshal a question, when she heard Elliot's phone ring. "El, really?"
He shrugged and gave her an apologetic look as he answered his phone. "Stabler," he said, holding up a finger to the marshal. "Honey, what's the matter? Okay, okay, sweetie, calm down. I'll be right there. Call nine-one-one, and I...I'm on my way. I love you."
Olivia watched him as he turned completely white and began running back toward the sedan. "What happened?" she yelled after him.
"I'll explain in the car," he yelled back, but he turned when he realized she wasn't with him. "Liv, please? Come on! Now!"
She looked at the marshal, and then shot another detective a concerned look. "Handle this," she said to him before turning and running toward Elliot. She got into the passenger seat, hooked her seat-belt, and said, "Where are we going? What happened?"
Shaking and trying not to cry, he shifted the car into gear and peeled away from the curb. "Maureen went downstairs to get a drink, she found Kathy on the living room floor...she couldn't...she's not..."
"Okay," she said, trying to stay calm now, and she nodded once as she took a deep breath. "I'm right here, El, okay, no more talking, just drive." She hit the button on the dashboard light, telling Elliot it was okay to drive faster. She looked him and saw sheer panic in his eyes. She let her hand drop to his, and he immediately linked her fingers with his and clutched the gear with her hand under his. She didn't know how she knew, but she had a strong feeling in the pit her stomach that he needed her now, more than he ever had. Turning her head, she took another shaky breath and promised him silently, that she would be there.
Peace and Love
Jo
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