Dominion

Jezyk

Disclaimer: not mine

Spoilers: some, none shrugs

Elliot had been a bear all day. He'd bitten Olivia's head off every time she'd so much as looked at him from the moment she'd walked in the door with an extra cup of coffee for him.

Therefore, it was with genuine surprise that he looked at her when she spoke.

"Let's get out of here." She inclined her head toward the hallway. "Come on, I'll buy you a drink."

His expression, and his mood, turned guarded as he decided she was up to something. He'd been an ass all day, even more of one than usual. And at the end of a long day, the last thing Olivia ever wanted to do was spend more time with him.

"There's no way you want to hang around with me tonight." He narrowed his eyes and prayed he hadn't embarrassed himself by looking too hopeful at her suggestion. He felt stupid for thinking it could have been possible that she might actually want to be around him when she didn't have to be, even if it was just for a moment. "I've been a bastard all day, I get it, sorry."

Her head leaned to the side and her face revealed nothing but understanding. "Everyone's in a pissy mood on their birthday. I don't know about you, but I could really use a beer."

He couldn't stop the grin that spread onto his face, nor could his partner stop the one that mirrored it. He nodded at the papers on their desks. "What about this?"

She shrugged, pulling on her jacket and lifting her hair out from under the collar. "I doubt it's going to disappear overnight. We'll do it in the morning."

Beer was always preferable to work, especially boring work. Knowing she wouldn't ask a third time, he stood with a smile. "Hell, who am I to turn down a free beer?"

Quite frankly, he was surprised she'd remembered. They weren't much for celebrating – holidays, birthdays, even happy hour. Most of the good, perhaps decent was a better choice, times they'd had were stolen moments carved out of a busy day at work. He felt bad suddenly, realizing that he wasn't sure of her birthday. He knew it was in September, somewhere in the twenties, but he really couldn't get any more specific.

He made a mental note to find it and write it down so he could buy her a drink when the day came.

She'd led him to a small, mostly empty bar, perched herself on a well-worn stool and nodded at the bartender. But she hadn't said another word to Elliot. He wondered what her silence meant, if she'd just felt bad for him, if she couldn't think of anything to say, if she was afraid she'd made a mistake, if she wished he'd turned her down. Her face was the careful sort of blank that prevented her from looking like a liar when someone asked and she claimed to be fine, the sort of blank that meant something was on her mind that she wasn't inclined to share.

He wondered why the hell she'd invited him if she'd wanted to sit there and contemplate her beer alone. He hated the silence. Not when it was comfortable, but when it was like this, when it was stilted and weird and left him rethinking every single thought in his head. He couldn't stand it.

"Something wrong?" He asked softly, not sure he wanted the answer, definitely not if she was going to un-invite him, no matter how unlikely it was for her to do such a thing.

Her head jerked toward him as though she'd forgotten he was there. Then she remembered and a smile curved one side of her mouth, crinkling the corner of her eye. "No, I'm good. How about you? You're the birthday boy, after all."

He lifted his beer, taking a long swallow. "I'm good." And he was. At least at that moment, sitting next to her, doing nothing besides smiling back. But then he remembered, the same way she had, except that rather than smile, it made him interrupt the one decent moment of the day. "You're not in a good mood, I'm not in a good mood, and you don't want to talk, so why are we here?"

Her eyes darted away, dislodging the honest smile she'd had, allowing him to know that she didn't want to answer. She shrugged, weaving her fingers through the hair falling over her shoulder, a nervous habit he'd only recognized years into their partnership when her hair was finally long enough to touch her shoulders. Seeming to realize the nervous tell herself, she withdrew her fingers, brushing the hair back away from her face, and reached for her beer bottle. Then she shrugged again.

He lifted his bottle to his mouth and drained the last sip, setting it on the counter with a thud and reaching for his wallet. "Thanks." As he dropped a bill on the bar, he expected she wouldn't even notice that he left.

But she looked back at him, her brows knitting together in confusion. "I've got it." She handed the ten back to him, her hand dropping back onto the bar when he refused to take it. "It's your birthday, I was buying you a drink."

He smiled a smile that didn't even think about reaching his eyes. "Thanks for the thought." He patted her shoulder, realizing a moment too late that he didn't touch her, making the contact even more awkward. His hand flopped back to his side and he wished he could undo it. He wished he could undo a lot, especially accepting her offer. "I'm really not in the mood, I guess."

But she seemed genuinely upset that he was leaving and so he found himself sliding back onto his stool.

"How about you get the next round?" He didn't wait for an answer as he nodded toward the bartender and held up two fingers.

She either realized that she'd been ignoring him or appreciated him staying, but whichever it was, she turned slightly toward him and the easy smile reappeared on her face. "You have any plans?"

"Oh, yeah, I just postponed them all to do some paperwork." He grinned at her as he started his second beer.

"I meant over the weekend or something." She glanced down at her fingers, picking awkwardly at one of her nails for a moment before she met his eyes again. "I don't really know what you do after work anymore. Got some girls on the side?"

"Hell yeah, you know you're awfully lucky to get some of my precious time." He snickered at the idea of him having any kind of life whatsoever besides work. It wasn't an insult though, that his partner didn't have any idea what he did outside of work, because he didn't have the first clue about what she did either. As well as they knew each other, which could be frightening at times, they were work friends. Their interaction began and ended with the office for most of the decade and a half they'd been together.

Which kind of made him curious again as to why they were there.

"So, why tonight?"

Sure, there was the occasional reason for them to grab a drink, a celebration of a case that turned out well or a hard-earned verdict that went their way, but it was rarely just the two of them.

She swallowed a sip of her beer, contemplating him carefully. "Why tonight what?"

Either he was losing the ability to read or she really didn't find the evening at all out of the ordinary. He wasn't sure which was worse. "How many times have we gone out for a drink after work in fifteen years? Why tonight?"

No, it was her, he decided, as she rolled her eyes at her beer to indicate she really didn't get the big deal. "It's your birthday, didn't we cover this?"

But there was something else, he realized, very, very well concealed behind her carefully nonchalant confusion, a light to her eyes that shouldn't have been there if she was as innocent as she was claiming to be.

He rolled the bottle between his hands as he tried to decide how to proceed. He wasn't going to get anywhere bullying her; she'd simply refuse to talk to him. Questioning her politely was only resulting in vague, coy bullshit. He'd have to scheme to get the truth out of her and he didn't think he had the energy to play.

"I've had fifteen birthdays since we met, Liv."

She smiled, overplaying the shock. "Really? Me too!"

Unable to help it, he laughed. But he wasn't about to let her distract him. He didn't want to play a game; he was just going to have to keep asking until she answered him or walked away. "So, why this year? Why not last year?"

"You were married last year." The answer was too quick, too flat to be anything but honest.

It hardly helped. "And I have to be divorced to have a drink with my partner?"

Her eyes met his, a startled look flashing across her face. It disappeared quickly and she shrugged. "You had somewhere else to be, someone else to celebrate with."

Glancing around the depressing bar, he sighed. "Is that what we're doing? Celebrating?"

She turned away slightly, her shoulders shifting into another shrug. "It's not that big a deal. If you have somewhere to go, go. If you don't want to be here, don't stay on my account."

He stared at his beer, biting his lip and wondering at her sudden anger. She usually snapped at him when she was hurt, which he could understand if she'd given the slightest indication of wanting to be there, except she seemed to want to be alone, which was why he was questioning her in the first place.

"No, I don't have anywhere else to be and I promise you'd be the first one to notice if I disappeared one day." Hell, he thought, she'd probably be the only one to notice, and that was only if she was in a good mood.

Sullenly she stared at her beer, shooting it the 'I told you so' look he'd only seen a few million times. "That's why we're here."

Silence reigned for several minutes while they both finished off their second beers. But, as always, the uneasiness got to him and he had to speak.

"Are we going to be here for a while drinking ourselves stupid? Should we get a table or are we going to leave in a few minutes?" He couldn't keep the edge out of his voice, his tone sounding far angrier than he intended, his frustration with their relationship – simultaneously the closest and most distant one he'd ever had - bubbled up. "Jesus, Liv, give me a damn hint here."

Annoyed, she shook her head and stared forlornly at her empty beer. "What the hell are you asking me for?"

"You're the one calling the shots here, genius."

She turned back to him then, her eyes darting back and forth between his. "Oh, is that so?"

Sometimes he wondered which one of them had the problem. Was she really that incredibly difficult to understand? Or was he really that confusing that she couldn't seem to make heads or tails of most of what he said?

He nodded at her. "Yeah, yeah, you are." She'd been the one to invite him. She'd been the one to convince him to stay. She'd have to be the one with the plan, because he was far too confused to come up with one himself.

But somehow, and not even remotely unexpectedly, Olivia heard something that he hadn't said. Or at least something he hadn't meant to say. Or maybe just something he hadn't realized he'd said.

"I didn't know that." She held his eyes a long time, solemn and serious and confusing as all hell. "I always thought you were running the show."

How, exactly, was he running the show when she'd asked him to get a beer? He really wanted to ask her, but he strongly suspected that she'd stare at him with her big brown eyes and swear to fucking god she didn't have a damn clue what he was talking about.

Instead, he shook his head. "Nope, it's all you."

"Oh." And then she slid off her stool, standing in the tiny space between them, her hands resting on the bar. She nodded, but didn't look at him. "Ok."

And then she did look at him, her eyes searching his again. Her face was so intense, so serious, that he barely noticed the way she was standing, so close to him that he'd had to separate his knees to accommodate her frame. Her hands moved up, her fingers curling around the back of his head, her arms pulling him forward.

He felt as confused as she'd appeared, so unsure of what was happening that he couldn't even figure out if he should stop her, let alone if he wanted to stop her.

All he knew was that her lips had found his, her mouth soft and gentle and encouraging, her tongue urging him to allow her to deepen the kiss.

He really didn't know how he'd wound up with his arms wrapped around her, her body pressed fully against his own, his hands buried in her hair, his tongue gliding against hers. He didn't even remember getting off his stool.

When she pulled back, her eyes were sparkling, the light he'd seen hidden earlier shining brightly at him. Her lips were wet and parted, her eyes hooded, her pupils wide, her hair mussed around her cheeks. She smiled.

"Happy birthday."

He smiled back, his whole body somehow numb and tingling and buzzing at the same time. "Guess I should have mentioned that you were in charge a long time ago, huh?"

"Probably." She laughed as she moved back to her stool, her hand reaching blindly over the side of the bar she apparently knew quite well, her fingers reappearing with a cherry. She held it to her lips, sucking on it lightly before pulling it into her mouth and discarding the stem.

She turned back to him, her eyes revealing that she wasn't the slightest bit confused by the attention he was paying her. "So, you want to get out of here?"

He grinned and reached for her hand. "Fuck yeah."

No matter what the future held, one thing was abundantly clear to him at that moment. He was having the best fucking birthday ever.