Disclaimer: I'm nowhere near creative enough to have thought of these characters-all the credit goes to DW.
Chapter One
Olivia Benson stretched out her legs, instinctively stopping from stretching them out completely and accidently bumping her partner Elliot's feet. Nine years of working and sitting across from him had conditioned her to always stop right before her knees fully unraveled. Nine years had also conditioned her to read his moods fully by his expressions and the surplus of noises that escaped from his mouth. The occasional grunts and hisses followed by droughts of silence, then a furious scratching from his pen, then the grunt/hissing combination being repeated currently told her that there was quite a bit of wheel turning going on in his head, and that whatever he was thinking about was annoying him. She snuck a surieptous glance at him, taking in the cloudiness of his blue eyes, the frown wrinkle that almost joined his brow together, and the tightening around his mouth that pursed his lips to the point where they almost looked puckered. Yep, she thought. Most definitely an annoyed, pensive Elliot. Thank goodness it was the end of the day. Annoyed Elliot was enough to stomach normally (though admittedly over the last two or three years she had had to gulp down quite a bit of it) but if it had been the beginning of the day she would have had to keep an extra close watch on him and once again play his "handler". This way he could go home to his ever burgeoning family and let them deal with whatever thoughts had him so irritated.
No, she thought suddenly, that wouldn't be fair. Even though a small part of her (the part the she routinely had to shush whenever his family was at issue) wanted to just bloody let Kathy be the wife she had once again become but had never fully been deal with all of Elliot, his anger was still hers. Hers to manage, hers to control, hers to dissuade. Kathy herself had put that burden upon Olivia one fateful day in the park when she had met her to enlist her help in ending the marriage. THE MARRIAGE. She snorted, drawing a glance from her otherwise oblivious partner. That blasted meeting sure had been unnecessary. Kathy had told her, reminded her, that she was his partner, his stability. Of course, then had come the "jealousy confession" and with that, the burden of dealing with all of Elliot's anger issues had irrevocably been placed on her shoulders as her own penance. Because for one small second when Kathy voiced her concerns that Elliot may have preferred Olivia's company over her own, Olivia had felt validated. Even as she assured Kathy that he always talked about his family, that small, horrible part of her gave a little jump. And that meanness guilted her into trying her darndest to make it up to Kathy in everyway she could think of.
"El" she said softly. His eyes looked up at hers and held them for a moment. "I can finish up the paperwork on this if you want to get going".
He looked at her, huffed out a sigh, and said "Do you really think he loved his all of his wives the way he was supposed to?"
She looked up at him, contemplating her answer. All throughout their handling of the, as Munch so wittily termed it, "snitch" case, they had been on opposite sides. She had rather also thought that they were each a bit on the wrong sides, but Elliot had been quiet and contemplative throughout the whole thing (well, she thought, except the tackle in the courtroom…that was pure Elliot, pure Cop). After sifting through the evidence that she had seen in each of his wives eyes (which, as any reliable philosopher would tell, are the windows to the soul) she sighed and replied "I don't know. They each gave him something different. Maybe he loved their individualism. I still think its degrading though. One man doesn't need more that one woman to make him whole anymore than one woman needs one man".
"I just don't get it" he replied.
"Different culture EL" Olivia said back to him.
Elliot pushed up from his desk and mumbled something she couldn't quite understand but that sounded an awful lot like " Maybe you just don't get it" before putting his coat on and turning the lamp of on his desk.
"Goodnight" she called after him.
"Night" he threw back over his shoulder.
Olivia sighed, knowing that whatever that little conversation had been about, it had at least alleviated his tension enough that he could go back to his house in the suburbs without biting at his wife and kids and new son. She winced, fighting back the slight twinge that that particular image always seemed introduce. With the space that his feet usually occupied recently vacated, she uncurled her knees all the way and stretched her long legs. When her toes slithered under the back of her desk across the line to the underside of his, she couldn't help feeling that the underside of his desk felt far too empty.