Angst is sometimes inserted where my middle name should be at so I'm SORRY. LOL. But I will admit, I tried really hard to make a little fluffy one shot for Olivia Freaking Benson's possible canon birthdate. But it just couldn't be done, at least not this time around. Maybe number 48 will be a lil better. For this piece, I took creative liberties and this is sort of a pre ep/post ep for Pattern Seventeen, so it's more than slightly AU. Also, thanks . That is all.
Enjoy. :)
Forty-Seven
Forty-Seven. Four. Seven. If she takes 7 minus 4, that leaves 3. 3 is also the amount of years since she's seen his face. Maybe it's been three years since he forgot hers.
She'd almost forgotten it again.
She'd almost allowed herself to conveniently let the day drivel by like any other day.
She'd almost forgotten that she was another year older.
Almost.
She almost forgets who she entirely is until a knock on the door at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night jars her from her book, reminding her.
Normal people aren't used to late night calls and knocks at the door past a certain hour, and she tries to convince herself she is normal, though she realizes it's somewhat in vain.
She glances over her shoulder toward the door to her bedroom from where she's perched on the couch.
Silence perpetuates the stillness around her and her glass slides precariously close to the edge of her knee where it's resting, when the knocks become louder the second round.
She jerks at the intrusion and dark-square framed glasses that had been pushed up onto her forehead, fall into her lap.
She breathes, tries to, slowly, deliberately..., the ache in her cheeks as she holds air it in a welcome distraction from the ache building behind her eyelids.
She places the snifter on her coffee table and stands up slowly, wondering if that beer on the way home from work tonight is playing tricks on her mind, if that little bit of alcohol after the stress she endures daily is wreaking havoc on her psyche.
Then she remembers, she is another year older. Everything moves slower physically and for her mind, but the time never seems to falter.
Falter is what she does best though. She falters when she thinks of him. She falters when she thinks of the past, she falters when she takes note of the sickening silence outside her door once more and she's not sure if it makes her sad or not.
It's not like she's not used to night time guests, just not when she'd made it blatantly clear to her colleagues that she wanted to be left the fuck alone tonight, and just not when she wanted to pretend to be normal.
It wasn't enough that ACS is, was, breathing down her neck over Noah, she didn't need her co workers all lingering in the shadows of her aching resolve too.
And once again, the silence that rains in droplets down her apartment walls shatters in a loud rumble of thunder in the form of another set of much louder knocks on the front door of her still, fairly new apartment, in a fairly new part of town she's not quite adjusted to yet.
But she finds solace at night by listening to the all too familiar sound of the same old city she'd foraged through with him.
When she reaches the front door, grasping at air for the knob, she instinctively knows who's there.
She instinctively anticipates his intense gaze. She instinctively falters.
Instinctively knows that nothing will be the same yet again once she opens that wooden barrier separating their entities from one another.
She feels the tug through the door and it's stronger than she's ever remembered; even in her half cognizant daze, it's a like dance in front of the door, one foot in front of the other, two steps to the side and so on until she remembers.
Three.
The number angers her and before she allows another moment to float by, she jerks the chains off the latch and flings the door open, instinctively- knowing who's there.
She shatters with the impact in that moment when she sees him. The pieces of her come crumbling down to the duvet on the floor inside.
His eyes are exactly what she anticipates.
A phantasm of emotions flow across them, a tornado ripping through the unscathed apartment as he watches her, the air is being sucked out of her and into him yet it's still so calm.
Everything is so goddamn calm and yet she feels him tugging at her with his gale like force. He's standing there, his hands spasming at his sides waiting for her to invite him in or maybe for her to say something.
Instead, she's standing there, left hand gripping the door knob, poised to slam it shut in his face any second if she so chooses and the other hand mimics his, clinching, un-clinching.
Clinching.
She breathes in deeply, so deeply, so harshly, through her nose that she feels like she might cause herself a nosebleed, or to pass out.
However, she takes a moment, pushes through herself to gaze over him as steadily as possible, taking in his aroma, his stature, his color. Him.
Her eyes scan over him, from the fine hairs on his head to the dark soled shoes on his feet. As her eyes rise back to his, his are a shade darker than she remembers, an icy glow to an ocean abyss that swirls within him she surmises.
He's an abyss of mystery.
His pupils glide over her, mirroring the actions of her own.
The intensity of his gaze, the palpability of his aroma, his lingering presence suddenly fester into a force-field and that's when she finds herself falling back, slipping slowly, crumbling, lying on her back.
It had been a moment she'd had a grasp of and she'd been letting herself just give in to the blackness, until he'd pulled her into him again, falling with her, supporting her and goddammit, the haze from the day was taking her with it to the darkness that had been blanketing them for over one-thousand days and she wanted to let it.
She also partly wanted to tell him to come in, close the door, but she imagines, maybe if she just keeps her eyes closed, no one will be able to see inside them anyways and she drifts.
e.o.e.o.e.o.e.o
Her eyes slowly open, an insurmountable pressure pulsating behind her lids now as she glances sleepily around her darkened living room.
The small table lamp next to the couch is turned off and she's on her chest, the couch pillow jammed beneath her right cheek, her jaw slightly numb from the immobility.
She lets her eyes slip closed again before she hears the pitter-patter.
She lifts her head as much as possible toward the window and notices the rain for the first time.
It hadn't been raining when she had bulldozed her way through to her front door earlier and as she glances at the wall clock, the hands blur but she makes it out to be half past midnight, nearly four and half hours since then.
The alcohol has worn off for the most part but she feels it in the nausea slowly building and that's when she turns on her side, alleviating the pressure on her spine.
It doesn't take but a split second to see him.
She'd almost forgotten.
Almost.
"Do you need help?"
His tired voice filters out of the darkness, quietness, solitude and it slithers across her skin and skitters away as quickly as it came.
He's sitting in the small cushioned arm chair beside the couch.
He's slouched back, his head resting lazily against the back of the chair, his legs sprawled out in front of him and his arms lying like rubber bands on the armrests.
She realizes, the moment she takes in the fatigue in his eyes, the redness around his irises the moment he turns his gaze away from her.
The light seeping inside from the streetlight catches the whites of his eyes, a glean to them sets her into motion and she's using her free arm to push herself into a semi sitting position on the loose cushions beneath her.
In a hoarse murmur, "I'm not drunk."
He scoffs lightly, the glint in his eyes sparkles but the small grin on his face quickly disappears from sight when he turns his focus back on her.
"That wouldn't be you."
It's a simple analysis, a simple knowledgeable fact she knows he's held onto and the sadness in his voice singes the air around her and suddenly it's much too warm.
There is too much sitting near the fuel, too much fire to be ignited if one drop of a match occurs and that's what makes her sit up higher, flaming the smoke.
"Like you would know," she mumbles audibly, angrily.
He doesn't respond, doesn't react, just looks down at his long sleeve t-shirt, World's Best Dad printed down the front in dark blue letters on dark grey cotton.
She wants to laugh.
She wants to rise to her feet and grip the shirt in her hands and flame him for depriving her of knowing him as that person for so long.
1,077 days.
"Are you drinking?"
She closes her eyes.
Do I drink?
Hell yeah I do.
I do when I need to forget for awhile. I do when I'm lonely. I do when the kid I've fallen in love with cries. I do when I break up with lovers. I do when I'm need of a lover. I do when you leave me.
Not left. Leave me. Because every time I close my eyes you're there then when I open them again you're fucking gone again.
So yeah, have a drink.
Am I a drunk?
Whoever finds that out, let me know.
I don't care to wait and see.
"I'm going to bed," she answers instead, ignoring his imploring looks because he has no right to ask such things of her when he forgot she was always teetering between alcoholism and an unknown evil.
He has no right to ask her when he conveniently forgot that there were over 3,000 days between them, a part of them and he left that behind.
He has no right to look at her with pity when she took more than one shot for him as she'd sat in a bar tonight, and many past nights, wondering if she could find someone, something to just... to just numb the ache.
She silently rises from the couch and slings the throw against the back with an anger still simmering and she stumbles.
She's falling, falling again, and in a moment of clarity his arms are holding her up, his chest pressed against her back and his breath instantly singeing her neck.
She closes her eyes, too exhausted, too numb, too careless... to be embarrassed that she's falling all over herself because she decided her forty-seventh birthday was a good day to sulk in the past and how much if fucking sucks.
It's an intoxicating mixture. An inviting concoction to be so pissed at him and so inebriated with his smell, presence and alcohol to care that he's slowly helping her walk toward her bedroom.
It's a dangerous affair to simultaneously hate and love the way he adjusts his left arm around her lower back and his right to her farthest hip with ease, without hesitation.
It's a slur of recognition, it's an onslaught of self degradation, it's her hopefulness this isn't some morbid hallucination that keeps her upright long enough to stumble into him.
He's walking her toward her bed and he sits her on the edge and leaves her there, walking toward her adjoining bathroom like he knows this place, like he knows her.
He comes back with a cool wash cloth and she barely registers the offering.
It's only when the material touches her skin that she realizes he's still standing there; he runs the wet cloth over her forehead, to her cheeks then to her neck, letting it linger there before she clamps her hand onto his, her eyes burning, gaze forward, looking at nothing and seeing everything.
"I don't need you."
"I know."
His answer is sharp. She looks over and his eyes are emblazoned with something she's not quite used to seeing in him, especially when they're purely on her.
"I'm not drunk."
He hesitates before removing his hand from beneath hers and gently wiping the dark hair from her eyes and forehead.
"I'm not judging you even if you were," he whispers, relents.
She scoffs, and whispers, feels her voice strengthen with each syllable.
"You're a liar, Stabler. A damned bad one, but one nonethe...less."
He nods, letting go, letting her win and it's an exhausting tango they've maneuvered in for almost two decades.
She closes her eyes and begins pulling down the blankets to her bed, not caring if he watches her sleep.
The booze is wearing off, and the more it does, the more she feels him, the more she registers the way he affects her, the more she'll remember once he's gone again.
Sleep. She needs to sleep whatever this is off. She's drunk on him. She'd been wavering between tipsy and fully intoxicated when she'd left the bar tonight.
Two glasses of wine one right after another after she'd gotten home had done her in and she's just now admitting to herself now that of all days to get caught in the act, it had to be on number forty-seven.
"Here," she hears him offer when she realizes she'd flopped back onto the covers instead of under them.
She feels him pulling the blankets gently from under her and it's nothing like she'd imagined.
Seeing him again after contemplating the actuality that she might actually not ever again, is finally registering to her as she feels his warm palm circle her ankle, lifting it as to put it underneath the heavy material.
Her eyes close involuntarily from the touch, and she immediately feels so unbelievably foolish.
It's his voice again that halts those self deprecating thoughts beginning to run marathons in her mind.
"It's your birthday. So I'll take care of everything tonight. You. You just sleep. Don't worry about anything else. Everything will still be standing in the morning, I promise," he offers sincerely as he pulls the blanket over her waist and timidly sits on the side of the bed facing her.
She watches, her hooded eyes drooping as she stares back at him.
Questions begin swirling, the normal questions of Where the hell have you been? Why are you so goddamn righteous? Why do I fall for you every damn time?
Why can't I let you go?
But she doesn't voice any of them, the only one that seeps out from within without her control is just as heartbreaking for herself.
"Why now?" It's a whisper, it's a plea, it's prayer to something higher than them whom she hopes is listening...
He moistens his lips, stares down at the blanket covering her up to her waist and simply breathes for moments she doesn't care to keep track of.
He finally raises his eyes, moisture tipping the scale on actually pooling and she finds herself mesmerized by how much weight he still seems to burden and isn't actually surprised for once when he lifts his left arm over her waist and plants it on the other side of her.
He leans forward, eyes focused on her, only her, and his words emblazon themselves into her chest as he speaks them.
"If you think for one second that I've lived without you, then...you... me... our relationship was nothing like I thought it was."
She blinks at him feeling the hit of his words immediately, something in the hurt inside of his words sobering her up.
She breathes shallowly as he watches her and she watches him, their eyes connected in one single utterance.
"There is always two sides of the coin, Liv," he rasps, his hand moving closer to her hip, "there is always two sides to the fucking pain," he continues more hoarsely. "It's not all about you."
Her chest flares with heat, the truth in his words slicing through her, an icy path left in his wake. She's been in mourning since the day he left, hiding it more and more as they days, years passed by, but still mourning just as much.
His life lay in the same ruins. His pain in the words left unsaid.
She takes his truths and buries them down inside of her for safe keeping. She finds herself speaking before she has a chance to process everything.
"I know," and suddenly the anger flares up again but it's at herself. It's her that's always screwing things up. Just looking at herself from his perspective sends her spiraling and she turns her head away from him, the tears pooling in her own eyes.
"I've searched day in and day out for ways to make sure I was enough for you if or when I decided to show my face again. But the truth is, I fought that battle for so long that I hadn't realized that it was never going to happen. I was never going to be enough, never."
She breathes in deeply and she's so intoxicated by his scent that she debates the benefits of holding her breath. Maybe if she did it long enough, she'd pass out again and maybe the pain of his confession would dissipate into a dazed bliss of unconsciousness.
But she fears it too much now. She can't lose him again.
She can't lose this again.
"Elliot, I'm alone,...drinking,... I'm pathetic...," she trails off.
"Look at me," he pleads, his voice stern, his body taught and hovering as he looks down at her. "No one has ever dealt with the shit you have. You have a goddamn right to celebrate your birthday however you want. Nobody here is criticizing you."
"No, but you're pitying me."
"It's not pity."
"I don't believe you."
"Liv, there's never been a day in my life I have pitied anything about you. I've empathized. I've memorized everything about you because ..." he trails off, losing his confidence by the second but she doesn't falter this time, finding his weakness in the way she's able to goad him when she's so mad.
"Don't stop now, El. Keep going...," she jabs.
"Liv, I could never because I've never known anyone that I've ever felt so connected to, I've never known someone that I could relate to. Your mother, my father. Those cracks led us on the same path and I'd never felt something like that before."
She studies him, processes his words, breaks down, analyzes, anything she can because she's Olivia goddamned Benson and that's what she does. She picks him apart at the seams, wraps him around her and ties him, to what she's not sure of.
"Don't say that," she breathes out, her eyes furrowed with too many questions and a long history between them that fits the bill but not quite enough for this moment.
"Don't say what?" he responds slightly jarred by her iciness, but her response hadn't been intentional.
"Don't say sappy shit to me. I hate that. You can just tell me you love me and get it over with."
She immediately regrets her words, self deprecation aside, she's too loose lipped with alcohol in her system and anger on her brain.
He looks bewildered for a few moments before a small smiles grazes his lips. He locks eyes with her before narrowing them at her, and she can tell he's chalking up her actions, her words, her arguments to the alcohol now and it's one small blessing to still have that connection because it's too soon, too soon for all of this.
"I'll...I'll let you go to sleep. But before that, and even though this wasn't my ideal setting for your birthday present, I guess I'll go ahead and give it to you now."
He sits up, pulling out a long black box from his baggy jean pockets and hands it to her. She glances at the time and it's pushing 1 a.m. and it's almost not her birthday anymore.
She almost wants to make him keep whatever it is because, it's... so much, and not enough.
The Semper Fi medallion had sent her reeling, nothing in this box would be anything short of that.
She glances at him quickly seeing his eyes anticipating, watching her movements carefully.
She opens it and inside is a small silver bracelet because he knows a necklace would be too much.
On the bracelet is a silver locket that opens and closes, meant to hold a small picture inside. It's not a cheap one and that makes her hate him a little again. Because this is too much.
The meaning is too much.
"It uh, it's s'posed to... hold a little picture in there. I heard about your baby. I thought you'd uh," he stumbles, thinking along the lines of where her mind had been going. Yes, her baby, but what about him?
She naturally might have gone with a picture of her mother as well, but what about Elliot?
Her eyes clinch tightly, and she digs the heel of her hand, the one holding the bracelet tightly in her palm, into eyes, fighting, warring, demeaning her emotions.
"I don't have a baby."
He stills.
His back straightens.
He stops breathing.
And she hates him.
But she doesn't not love him.
"At least not anymore. They took him today. December 13, 2014. Exactly forty fucking seven years after I was thrown at my own mother."
"I'm sorry."
She puffs out a small laugh. "Yeah, me too."
"They're wrong, Liv."
"Haven't I heard that before? Obviously, you are. And anyone who thinks the same. Because I'm the one stumbling and passing out drunk in your arms. Not once but twice. I don't know when it will end, but it has to soon."
"Liv," he presses gently, obviously stricken with guilt by the present. "I know this means very little right now. I know I'm not in the right place with you to make these kinds of promises, but... my feelings have never changed."
Silence overtakes them as she breathes shallowly, closing her eyes to the sound of both of them. The pitter-pattering on the window intensifies and she takes note of the way her heartbeat mimics the insistent pattern.
Her pulse is way too fast. Maybe she's on her way to a heartattack, not like it would be a surprise. She's at that age where anything can go wrong but one thing stays intrinsically right.
Elliot.
"I'm never going to give up hope for you, Liv. Never," he rasps as she stays silent. Sh doesn't see him move. Doesn't see him slip onto the bed next to her. She only feels.
She only feels him grasp her hand, pulling it away so he can open her palm and take the keepsake.
She thinks maybe he's regretted his decision to buy it for her, she hopes, prays he's as guilty as he should be for making her heart falter.
There's that word again, falter. Once more, her whole being begins to quake beneath her skin when she feels him wrap the thin, silver chain around her wrist and then covering it with the warmth of his palm.
His words.
His words.
"I won't give up hope," he breathes close to her. His breath hitting her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks. "I'm sorry. For everything," he confesses.
When her eyes open, he's watching her with sullen blue eyes that make her world tilt yet again. His eyebrows knit with hesitation but his hand on her wrist is utter perfection.
"I'm not letting this go. Ever."
She's nodding.
He lifts his palm to her cheek, caressing for a few moments then bringing his forehead down to hers, pressing his warmth into hers.
Neverlettinghimgo she repeats to herself, only to herself. Because it's so soon. Too soon.
Because it's been a long time coming.
e.o.e.o.e.o.e.o
"Please don't hate me," he mumbles against her shoulder, his arms heavy as they lay draped over her abdomen.
She feels him press in closer to her, she can feel his heat seeping through the thin sheet and onto her skin.
His words vibrate through her, filling her once more only as he'd done moments earlier.
She swallows back the You deserve my hate. You hurt me beyond words.
Instead, she stays quiet knowing they've each been through so much pain in their lives. It's almost too much for any one person to bear so much ache.
She turns over in his arms, the warm flesh of her legs sliding in between his more muscular ones beneath the cool linen.
His arms stays in contact with her hip, rubbing his thumb back and forth causing a row of goosebumps to raise on her smooth skin.
She watches him as she speaks truths that she's always been able to bury deep within herself.
"I have never, never hated you," she articulates softly between them. Raising her free hand, she lifts it slowly to his cheek, and splays her palm over his day old stubble slowly forming.
His weathered features soften under her touch and she trembles inside. He makes her tremble without words.
He turns into her touch and that's when she swallows back the emotion bubbling so close to the surface.
It's been hours and the moment she'd pulled him into her, felt his lips grazing hers, she'd slowly felt the alcohol dissipate.
With each of his anxious movements above her, she'd felt her blood warm instantly, she'd felt her body expel itself of the toxins exploring her internally.
When he'd touched her inside so deeply that she'd gasped for air, she'd known in that moment the most sobering truth.
On December 13, 1967 her mother gave birth to her and on that day four decades later, Olivia's be experiencing a rebirth of her own.
With Elliot buried deep inside of her on a spontaneous instance of sex, she'd felt something she hadn't in a long time, with anyone.
She just felt.
After they'd finished, she'd known they wouldn't be in a relationship. At least not so soon after their moment of weakness, a much needed moment of weakness.
What comes out of this night, early morning is still in the unknown, but Olivia weakens slightly at the thought of him leaving her in the darkest hours without an explanation.
"Is your wife waiting at home?"
"No," his voice is instant, groggy. "If she was, would I have asked you not to hate me?"
"I don't know, who hasn't asked for forgiveness when they mess up?"
"Well it's not me."
"Okay," she placates. Her mind aches a little less than hours before, replaced by the ones in her thighs and in between.
She takes that moment of silence to wrap herself tightly around him figuratively and literally this time and in a moment of tenderness he invites her in with his broad shoulders and open arms.
She nestles her naked skin against his, tangling their legs as she wraps her arms around his shoulders and nestles her face into neck.
Even after sex he smells good. It's an interesting mixture of scents that are just him and the ones around them, one being the scent of both of them.
"I'm not sure what this will mean later, but I want you to know, Elliot, if you leave again with no word, I don't think I'll make it until next time to see you," she whispers hoarsely against the column of his neck.
She feels his arms wrap around her tightly, her breasts pressed firmly into his chest, "Jesus Christ, Liv," he mumbles into her hair, his voice watery.
She wants to protest the way his chest spasms against hers in sobbing breaths.
He holds on tightly, and she wants to protest the way he's stroking her hair and burying his face into it but she takes him at face value because it's Elliot.
He's the truth-speaker. He's an honest to God man who's never been capable of a lie.
He's simply, Elliot Stabler.
He's Elliot Stabler. Aged forty-eight. Born October 20, 1966. Libra.
She's Olivia Benson. Aged forty-seven. Born December 13, 1967. Sagittarius.
"The merging of Libra and Sagittarius can be paradise found for both Signs; this combination is a harmonious one, to say the least. Signs that are two positions apart in the Zodiac tend to have a very deep, special connection and understanding of one another."
Forty-Seven.
Finis.