Spoilers and references: through Season 16 (this is a post-ep for 16x23, "Surrendering Noah")
A/N: I think I shared many shippers' reactions to the final few moments of "Surrendering Noah," including shouting at the screen for Olivia to stop talking when she first said something to Nick. I spent a few weeks rationalizing that scene to myself, and what follows is my take thereon. Here's hoping it makes up for what the writers continue to do to Stabler's fawning fans.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters who appear on the show.
"Growing Balance"
She had Noah up on her hip in the card aisle of a cramped Duane Reade early one Sunday afternoon. Lucy's birthday was that coming Wednesday, and Olivia was worried that she would either forget or run out of time to get something if she didn't do it today. Reading a card and putting it back, Olivia took a small step back to survey the assortment again, absently giving Noah a kiss on the top of his head as she did so. In the same moment, the aisle erupted in squeaky laughter and the thumping of feet on low-pile carpeting. As Olivia took another step back, she collided with someone who had been running down the aisle, and after she had recovered from the initial surprise of stepping into an unexpected person, she whipped her head around to see who it was. All she saw, though, were two boys in soccer jerseys and backpacks gleefully disappearing around the end of the aisle. She smiled softly after them, not taking offense at their horseplay but entertaining the thought that, one day, that might be her son and his friend.
Her lingering gaze must have been misinterpreted by the adult in charge, however, because before she could return to the cards, a sonorous "Come back!" was bellowed from behind her. When the command was not immediately followed, the apparent father advanced down the aisle after his ill-mannered son. "Damnit," he muttered as he stalked toward Olivia.
The scent hit her nose before her brain had processed anything else. She froze.
The father cleared his throat. "Eli, get over here," he grated, then he softened his voice as he reached Olivia and gently took her elbow: "Ma'am, I'm really s—" The apology died in his throat, though, as soon as she turned. "Olivia..." he gaped. She was utterly speechless, and he looked immediately to Noah and back to her. His eyes flicked back and forth several more times, a grin forming on his face, growing each time he looked between mother and son. "Is this guy yours?" he asked in breathless wonderment.
She was about to answer when Eli came trudging around the corner. "What, Dad," he said flatly.
Elliot had to shake his head to remember that he'd been mad at his son. "Eli, you ran right into her and didn't even stop. Don't you have something to say?"
"Excuse me," Eli said in the same flat tone as before.
Elliot growled and god, how she had missed that. "That's what you should have said then. What do you say now?"
"Sorry?"
Elliot huffed. "Go pick out a snack. I'll be there in a second." He turned back to Olivia. "He's an ongoing project," he said of his youngest son.
She smiled at him and studied the lines of his face. Very little had changed, it seemed.
Elliot was staring at Noah again. It had always been hard to distract him from babies. Another one of the things she had missed.
"This is Noah," Olivia said, finally speaking for the first time.
"Hi, Noah," Elliot said. He then raised his hands slightly. It seemed so reflexive, Olivia wondered if he would have been able to stop himself if he'd tried. "May I?" he asked cautiously.
The request surprised her, though it shouldn't have. "Um—yeah," she said, shifting her son into a better position for a hand-off. Elliot picked him up and brought the boy instantly to his chest.
"Hey, buddy," he crooned as Noah stared at him. "He's so beautiful," Elliot breathed sincerely, looking back to the boy's mother. Years ago, though she wouldn't admit it to anyone, Olivia had fantasized about this very image: a domestic scene, with Elliot tenderly and familiarly holding her (sometimes their) child, swaying him back and forth and working his natural Stabler charm on him. Now, with everything that had transpired between them, she didn't know how to handle the reality of the moment.
She struggled for something to say. "Eli's gotten big," she decided on.
"Yeah!" Elliot agreed, huffing a laugh as he looked away from Noah for the first time. He glanced back at the boy then back to Olivia, an instantaneous knit in his brow. "I'm sorry, I should have let you say hi. Eli!"
"No, it's okay. Really," she assured him. Eli didn't come, anyway.
"He had a soccer game over at the park today," Elliot said, more to Noah than Olivia.
"How'd they do?"
"Oh, they lost. But he scored a goal, so he's pretty excited."
"I bet."
Silence fell again. For some unknown reason, Olivia desperately wanted to ask after Kathy, but since she wasn't sure why, she decided to keep her mouth shut.
Instead, she watched Elliot with Noah. He pressed his forehead to the boy's, closed his eyes, and continued to sway him.
"Liv," he mumbled, "You have no idea how happy I am. This is what I always wanted for you."
"Me too," she confessed.
Elliot shifted and glanced up at her again. "So who's the lucky guy?"
"What do you mean?"
"Who's the lucky stiff that gets to come home to the two of you each night?" he asked, jostling Noah for emphasis.
"Oh! Um, no one."
Elliot's confusion showed on his face. "Don't tell me some jackass had the nerve to walk away—"
"No, it's just been me and Noah from the start," she said quickly. His eyes narrowed as he tried piecing things together. "He was in foster care because of a case we were working and... I just got full custody a few weeks ago."
Elliot's mouth was hanging open, speechless. He exhaled roughly then, mechanically, hooked an arm around her shoulders. He tugged her forward, against him, and pressed his mouth to her temple. His hand that had pulled her to him now cradled her head. He shook his own head against hers, amazed. "I'm so, so happy for you, Olivia," he whispered fiercely.
Smiling, she tried to pull away, but he kissed her temple, then her forehead, then the bridge of her nose. Seemingly of its own volition, her arm then settled around his waist.
Elliot softly cleared his throat and, just as softly, whispered, "I used to pray for this."
Olivia reared back, keeping her distance from him with her hand on his hip.
"Is that weird for you?" he asked, watching her closely.
She reached for Noah, and Elliot willingly handed him back. "Maybe. I don't know what it's supposed to mean," she said, turning back to the greeting cards.
"Doesn't 'mean' anything except that I used to pray that you'd be a mother one day."
"That is weird, Elliot," she told him quietly.
"Why?" he pressed, closing in behind her.
She couldn't put her finger on it, but she tried: "Because it... wasn't work-related."
"When were we ever just about work?" Elliot scoffed.
"That's all I was ever about with you!" Olivia insisted, turning to frown at him.
"Yeah, I know, I prayed about that, too!" Elliot muttered.
"What does that mean?" she responded, rounding on him.
"I dunno," he shrugged, "I just always wanted... something more... for you."
"More than what?"
He sniffed, looked past her into the distance, and finally settled his gaze on the wrist of the arm that held her son. "Than... SVU? NYPD? I dunno," he said. "Kinda felt like your desk was all you had sometimes."
She set her jaw and was about to go off on him—ask him how he dared talk to her about lost years, missed opportunities, lives beyond the job, when he was the very person who had stunted her growth that whole time—when she had a moment of alarming doubt: over four years, she had grown to resent him because of what she saw as their unhealthy codependence. But if he were now saying that he literally begged his god for more for her, was he really to blame for her twelve-year stagnancy?
She was rescued from her thoughts by a too-grown seven-year-old: "Dad, come on, we're ready," he barked from the other end of the aisle, so close to weaving past the registers and straight outside.
"No, come here for a sec," Elliot said, holding his arm out and waving his son over. Eli trudged down the aisle. His mop-topped friend followed. "Eli, this is Olivia. She was my partner when I was on the job."
"Hey," he said.
"Hi Eli!" Olivia said blithely, feeling like she had whiplash from the sudden change in conversation.
"And this is her son, Noah," Elliot continued. Then he gestured at Eli's teammate. "And, Olivia, this is Birch," he added, glaring at her a little as he said it, letting her know exactly how he felt about trees as names.
Birch lifted his hand in a quick greeting.
"Boys, Olivia was actually there when Eli was born. Pretty cool, huh?"
Birch nodded politely and Eli just said, "I know."
"And, Eli, we've met since then. Do you remember any of it? You were very little."
He shook his head vaguely. "Nah. But Mom talks about you sometimes."
Olivia looked immediately to Elliot for clarification, but his furrowed brow indicated that he was just as confused and startled as she. "Like telling you about the day you were born, or..." Olivia prods.
"No, like, whenever I get home from my dad's, she wants to know if you were there."
"Oh."
"It's kinda weird."
"Yes it is," his father mused before putting his hands on his son's shoulders and turning him around. "But let's go, huh?" he said, kicking Eli's feet and making him giggle. Olivia smiled to see the interaction and how Eli softened. They took a few steps and Elliot looked back. "You coming, Liv?"
She took a breath to decline, but her hand reached out and plucked a birthday card from the rack. "Yeah," she breathed instead.
Outside, they fell into stride as they once had so easily. Their pace was different, though. There was no urgency for once in their synchronized steps. With the boys leading them, they simply strolled. It was foreign and familiar all at once.
"Can I buy you a coffee?" Elliot asked, nodding to the coffee shop they were about to pass.
"Sure," she said airily. She felt as though she were in a trance. Her Sunday mornings just didn't go like this; she didn't fully understand leisure, and certainly not with Elliot—not when he'd been gone for so long, and not when she had convinced herself she was so mad at him.
"Boys! C'mon!" Elliot called, veering towards the glass door of the coffee shop. Eli and Birch turned around and jogged back, ducking under Elliot's arm as he held the door open for them. They waited patiently as Elliot ordered and prepared coffee for himself and Olivia, who stood off to one side, still bearing Noah on her hip and watching the scene in amazement. She actually took her coffee differently now, but it hardly mattered. And she was too transfixed by watching him work so effortlessly from memory and routine that she couldn't have said anything to stop him even if she'd wanted to.
Out on the street again, coffees in hand, Elliot offered to carry Noah. Wordlessly, Olivia consented, and they shifted as they walked on, not having to pause for even a moment to work out the hand-off. It was simply seamless. Second nature. As if not only had they not been apart for four years but they did this every day. But Olivia didn't even think about that until Noah was securely in Elliot's arms, rearing back to watch him sip his coffee.
"So how've you been?" he asked at last as they ambled on.
She made a small, involuntary noise in the back of her throat. "Good," she told him. "Great. Trying to figure out that elusive work-life balance, but, you know, it's good." She smiled over at him. "What about you?"
He took a breath. "Well... pretty good. Got a job in private security, so the hours are a little more humane. The pay's okay."
"And the kids?"
"Maureen's getting married!" he said with an instant grin.
"Really!"
"Yeah. October."
"Dare I ask about her fiancé?"
Elliot chuckled. "He's not bad."
"High praise."
"Don't ever tell her, but I kinda like him."
"Never thought I'd see the day..."
They both laughed a little as they turned the corner onto 92nd.
"How about Kathleen and the twins?"
"Kathleen is really good. Working for a lawyer. Has been for about three years. Still sober. It's good. Lizzie just finished an Environmental Science degree at SUNY Purchase. And Dickie... joined the Marines after all. They've got him down at Lejeune."
Olivia nodded her head. "And Kathy?" she asked carefully.
Elliot cleared his throat. "She's okay. Blames me for Dickie, but... it is what it is. She and I... finally called it quits a few months ago."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's been coming."
The boys took off running as soon as they saw the playground. Even Noah, as if it were instinctual, started squirming in Elliot's arms. Elliot and Olivia followed the boys at their own steady pace and found a bench inside the playground fence within view of the structure the boys were already climbing.
After a visual check with Mom to make sure it was okay, Elliot put Noah down, and they watched him toddle away towards the play area. To Olivia's great surprise, Eli jumped down from his perch and went running over to Noah as soon as he saw him coming. Birch followed soon after, and the two older boys guided Noah to an installment meant for younger children then helped him explore it.
"Kids are amazing, huh?" Elliot offered, watching her watch them.
"They are," she agreed.
They watched the three boys play for a while, and Elliot finally asked, "How's work?"
She stiffened a little, just enough for him to notice. "It's never easy, that's for sure," she said. "Munch and Cragen retired. We got some new faces in the bullpen. But it's always the same case, different day, you know?" She paused, reflected on the last couple of years. "But it brought me to Noah," she added with a faint smile, "so it's not all bad."
Elliot smiled to see her so happy, and silence fell briefly between them. "And you made Sergeant?" he prompted after it appeared that she wasn't going to mention it.
"You heard about that?" she responded softly, not coyly but with genuine, quiet surprise.
"Yeah, I saw it in the newsletter."
"You actually read that thing?"
"I think us retirees are probably the only ones who do!" he joked.
She smiled bleakly at the mention of his retirement and looked away. Even he could sense the shift in the air.
"I'm proud of you," he told her soberly then, all previous jocularity gone. "I should have called or something, but…"
"It's okay."
He was watching her so carefully, but she couldn't meet his gaze. Avoidance. This wasn't new for them. Finally, he looked away, too. Guilt wasn't new, either. "Did I hold you back?" he asked at last in a very small voice.
Her eyes immediately snapped to his, wondering how he could possibly have tapped into her memory of what she told Nick that night in her kitchen. But they'd always been so in sync, hadn't they? Why should she expect it to be different now? "No," she told him, even though it's not what she had told Nick. But now, with Elliot right next to her, and now that they no longer worked together, it didn't feel as dangerous to give voice to the truth that had always lurked just below the surface. "I did it to myself."
He inhaled deeply, maybe relieved that she wasn't blaming him. "What changed?"
"I got a new partner," she said.
Elliot looked at her skeptically, ready to challenge the statement: had she not just said he wasn't responsible?
"I had to be different with him," she explained. "Everything was easy with you—"
"I doubt that!" he scoffed.
"I mean the way we functioned. It was natural. Comfortable. But I had to change when I worked with him because nothing was easy. And I grew a lot."
He nodded in understanding.
"And I started going to therapy," Olivia added quickly.
He frowned at her. "Mandated?" he asked.
She looked down at her fingernails. "I'll have to tell you sometime. But not now."
Elliot seemed to accept that and left it alone, narrowing his gaze against the broad light of the afternoon as he monitored his son's behavior from afar. Eventually, he trained his squint on Olivia. "So I never challenged you to be better?"
"Did I need to be better?" she countered.
"You made me want to be better!" he reasoned.
She huffed a laugh. "I don't know. The whole time we were partners, I was so blind. I never followed any impulse to move... or change..."
"What do you call Oregon?"
"I came back, didn't I?" she sighed. "I spent so many years just... suspended. Waiting."
"For what?"
She glanced briefly at him, smiling tautly, then looked away. Did he really not know? Did he really not know for all those years? The skulking, unspoken truth swirled in her mind until finally it found its way out: "For you, El."
"What does that mean?" he asked quietly, as if he were afraid of the answer.
Olivia looked at the coffee cup in his hands then at hers then over at the boys. She studied them for a while, admiring how tender and attentive the two older boys continued to be. Watching Eli, she was struck by the memory of the pregnancy—moreover by the crushing revelation thereof—and the terror of the delivery itself. She glanced at Elliot over her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure you know," she said simply.
He took a deep, shuddering breath and edged closer to her on the bench, his knees crowding hers and one hand nearly reaching her shoulder atop the seatback, so close that she could feel the heat of his palm, even in the warm weather. "I'm sorry," he said.
She shrugged, turning towards him then away, not even acknowledging his proximity. They had spent years so close that it really didn't mean anything to her. "It wasn't you. I should have known better," she assured him. Across the playground, one of Noah's shoes had come off, and Birch was laboriously trying to get it back on.
Elliot shifted next to her, his hand sliding even closer. "But I never meant—" (and in the split second before he finished the sentence, Olivia's mind had already supplied a litany of expected responses: to hurt you, to lead you on, for you to wait, to give you hope—none of which she wanted to hear because they all just confirmed how foolish she had been for twelve years) "—to keep you waiting."
Her head turned to him faster than if a child had called for help. She studied his face for a minute. He couldn't look her in the eye. Instead, he stared at her shoulder, then the slats of the bench, then her knee, then her coffee cup, then finally at some undefined point beyond the ground itself.
"If I'd really had a choice, Liv—or the chance—I woulda..." he mumbled but trailed off. Finally he raised his eyes. "I loved you," he whispered in wonder.
Olivia clenched her jaw. Her heart was thudding in its cage so hard she thought her whole body must be pulsing. A breeze had loosened a strand of her hair, and Elliot now took it between his fingers and tucked it carefully behind her ear. She didn't flinch at the gesture, but she leapt up suddenly and strode over to where the boys were. "Noah, honey, we gotta go," she said, her voice catching in her throat.
"Aw, can't he stay a little longer?" Eli whined.
"No it's naptime," Olivia replied breathlessly. Birch had not yet succeeded in getting the shoe on, but it hardly mattered; Olivia scooped Noah up half-shod and took the sneaker in hand.
By the time she turned back to the playground gate, Elliot had caught up to her and was standing in her way. She tried to shoulder past him, but he stepped in front of her again. "Talk to me," he said.
"I can't do this." She barreled forward, and he moved to let her go, following beside her as she hurried to the gate.
"Why are you always running?" he asked.
She stopped in her tracks. "Look at me, Elliot. Look at me." He did. "I'm a mess. Right now, for the first time in four years, I'm a mess."
"No you're not, you're just running." She started for the gate again, so he pivoted in front of her, stopping her with a hand on her hip, the heel of his palm flattening against her pelvis. After all their years of hesitant touches, this was entirely new, and it had its intended effect. "So stop running," he commanded slowly and deliberately, and she had.
She couldn't kid herself; his forceful tone had always been something of a turn-on. She shifted uncomfortably under his scrutiny, and he brushed his thumb along her waist. "I have to get him home for a nap," she said, but even she was unconvinced.
"Have dinner with me."
"Elliot," she protested weakly.
"I'm asking for one night."
"I can't do this right now."
"Then when?"
Never, she wanted to say. It would have been easier. "I'm a mess. You don't deserve that."
"You're not a mess. And I don't deserve you—but I want you anyway."
"Elliot—"
"Always have."
"Elliot!"
"Tell me you stopped waiting."
"What?"
"Tell me you stopped waiting for me, and I'll drop it."
She grasped for words. "You left," she said simply. "What was I supposed to do?"
He looked like he'd had the wind kicked out of him. "Okay," he said at last, and she could see how difficult his retreat was.
She quickly reached to grasp his arm as he pulled away from her. "I needed you," she confessed.
He looked over her shoulder to the boys, who had recovered easily from Noah's absence and had moved back to the climber where they'd started.
"But I couldn't depend on something that wasn't there."
"I'm here now," he grated, focusing back on her.
She nodded, wondering how she might yet grow with an old partner in a new context. Nick would have objected, but she also pictured him boarding a plane for the west coast and never having to be the wiser. "Yeah you are," she agreed. "And right now, I have to get my son home." It sounded more genuine that time. She pulled Elliot closer and reached to give him a soft peck on the cheek. "So call me sometime for dinner, okay?" She squeezed his arm and released it, starting to walk past him.
"And you'll accept?" he asked, taking a hopeful half-step in her direction.
Olivia paused and turned back towards him, readjusting Noah on her hip. "I told you," she said with a slight smile, "I'm trying out that work-life balance." Then she turned, hefted Noah a little higher, and left the playground.
-fin-