Raincheck
Jezyk
Spoilers: Through Season 9
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously, or I wouldn't be resorting to fanfic, now would I?
Warning: Adults only. Smut. PWP. Or maybe there is a plot, but the plot is… well, no, ok, definitely no plot. What have you. You get the idea. And if you don't, that's a pretty good indication that you should let your parents know you're too young to be surfing the internet.
Chapter One
Elliot Stabler was not one to ruminate on anything, let alone immutable facts. But there was one truth that always stopped him in his proverbial tracks and allowed his mind to wander aimlessly through useless bits of data like a philosopher with far less pressing work to do than Elliot had on any given day.
That indisputable fact was simply that Olivia Benson exuded sex. Not in the sleazy, tacky way a stripper in a lacy red thong named Angel might. No, certainly not. But still, she was the embodiment of sex appeal. In respectable business attire, no less. God help anyone who saw her in a lacy red thong; the poor, lucky bastard would probably spontaneously combust.
Although he hated to admit it to himself, and would never admit to anyone else, particularly Olivia herself, but it was impossible to look at, think of, or talk to her without thinking about sex. Now granted, one might argue that was simply because the vast majority of their relationship revolved around sex, sadly not between them of course, but Elliot was convinced that was beside the point. For instance, a frightening percentage of his conversations with Cragen, Fin, and even Casey were about sex, but he had never once sat prisoner at his desk while he tried to will away a raging hard-on following a conversation with any of them. And this, naturally, could not be said of him in relation to his partner.
He was well aware of the statistic that reported the average man thought about sex every seven seconds. He was an average man, or so he liked to think. However, working in sex crimes ratcheted that number up to about every four seconds. And working with sex personified, well, he was screwed. Elliot Stabler pretty much thought about sex every single second.
How he could possibly think about sex more often, he wasn't sure. It was certainly a phenomenon worthy of study. But it was definitely possible.
And it was always on the days when Olivia had a date.
It was this quandary that befuddled him on one particular Wednesday afternoon. It had taken him half the day to recognize the signs – the free breakfast she brought him, the playful mood, the incessant checking of her wristwatch. By the time she suggested hot dogs for lunch, which he liked and of which she generally spent her entire lunch hour spouting off rather disgusting ingredients, Elliot knew she had a date. She was completing every piece of paperwork on her desk while occasionally taking a bite of her hot dog, which he knew meant she had no intention of staying late. Having nothing so pressing in his immediate future, he spent more of his time trying to stare at her without being noticed. She filed away one form, took a bite of her hot dog, and then stuck her finger in her mouth to clean off the mustard. Elliot shook his head and prayed his whimper had been silent. He absolutely did not need to think about where his mind inevitably went while processing both the images of the hot dog in her mouth and then her finger.
She never said a word about her plans for the evening, but given her mood was steadily getting better, as opposed to the normal effect of a day working in Special Victims, he was convinced he was right. Eventually, she noticed his pensive mood, despite her obvious distraction.
"You all right? You're awfully quiet, El."
He nodded. "You're awfully productive today. Hot date?" He said it with a smile. He wasn't jealous. They were friends and he was married and it was only fair that she got some too.
She tried to shake her head, even as a blush tinged her cheeks. "I'm meeting someone for dinner, but it's nothing special."
Elliot knew his partner well enough to know that since "someone" didn't merit a name, she was being honest that the relationship was of no consequence. What she didn't say, what she didn't need to say, was that "someone" and she would be doing something that would result in her being in just as good a mood the following day, however, also so relaxed that she wouldn't get much of anything at all done. And what she didn't know he knew was that it had been far too long since the last one of her awfully productive days.
When quitting time rolled around, Olivia was quick to grab her things. Murphy's Law ruled at the 1-6 and therefore, if something was going to go wrong, it was most likely going to go wrong right then. She bid a hasty good night as she was walking out, probably not even aware that her partner had replied in kind and implored her to have a good time with an impish grin.
And so, four hours later when the shit had long since hit the fan and burned through every other detective available, Elliot was very, very sorry that he was going to have to call her.
Even more so, since he was outside her apartment building by the time he got her on the phone. Listening to the ringing, he glanced up at her windows. The lights were out and he crossed his fingers that it was after, not during. When she answered the phone with an altogether too breathy "Fuck, Elliot, what" after she'd ignored two initial calls, he knew she hadn't been so lucky.
He waited, watching the door. She and "someone" emerged a few minutes later. He was trying to kiss her, but Elliot knew that was because he'd not quite understood the message. "Someone" had no importance by then; the chance was gone and she'd have a new someone by the next time she had a free evening. He felt bad for Olivia, for the frustration that she'd experienced, but he didn't feel as bad as the other man trudging away.
The tension was radiating off Olivia when she climbed into the passenger seat. Her cheeks were stained red. Her foot tapped impatiently on the floor. Her arms folded tight across her chest, trying to hide the lingering outward sign of her activities since it wasn't nearly cold enough to blame the temperature. She didn't say a word and he was thankful for it. He knew she wanted to kill him; he would have felt the same in her position.
"Sorry." He diverted his eyes from her, feeling bad suddenly for knowing as much as he did about how she was feeling at that moment. It seemed too personal to know, as though his understanding of his partner somehow equated to peeping in her windows. Her eyes turned to him, burning through his profile as he staunchly pretended not to know she was looking at him. He'd wanted her to know he got her pissy mood, but it was one of those rare times in their partnership where he was acutely aware that she was not a man and therefore felt violated that he knew what he did. Had it been Fin, the answer would have been something along the lines of 'damn, she was hot too.' But Olivia was not Fin and in keeping with the taboos of society, she undoubtedly preferred that no one, except her date, ever know that she was turned on.
It took what quite possibly outlasted eternity for her eyes to leave his face. Once she was no longer staring at him, he relaxed slightly. He tried not to notice her shifting uncomfortably in her seat. He tried not to know what would cause her to fidget miserably in the seat. He tried to ignore the idea that the poor woman and her date had only gotten so far as to make her hideously uneasy and terribly embarrassed.
He had to bite back the sudden urge to apologize again.
He had to bite back the sudden urge to offer to resolve her problem.
He also had to bite back his own body's instinctive reaction to the knowledge in his head. Because damn, all he could think about was that the cruiser's backseat was plenty big enough for the two of them to resolve their physical issues together in a mutually enjoyable way, rather than the shared pheromone-laden discomfort in the front seat.
The next few hours were filled with work. A victim, her story, a perp, his bullshit, paperwork. It was a miraculously easy case, with the victim easily able to identify the perp and the perp far too stupid to even ask for a lawyer before confessing. There was no reason the paperwork couldn't wait until morning, except that the boss hadn't gotten the chance to leave for those few hours Olivia had and was therefore demanding their paperwork. It was an open and shut case, he said, no sense in even leaving the paperwork open until the morning.
Olivia was about to explode, but she sat down and resolutely worked on fulfilling the boss's request. Elliot, who'd already felt like shit for ruining her plans, had inadvertently made things worse. He could honestly swear that it wasn't on purpose, although he wouldn't blame her one bit for thinking he was just being mean. In his own defense, he knew they'd long ago abandoned any idea of personal space. He should have realized that personal space became an issue when one's nerve endings were on fire and screaming for a long-denied release.
They'd been in the elevator on the way to the victim's hospital room. Olivia had pressed the button; Elliot stood where he normally would stand, just barely brushing shoulders with her. He'd always thought of it as their way of reassuring one another of their presence. But she felt differently about contact just then and had jumped away. Not thinking clearly, perhaps due to the hormone driven insanity in his brain that was convinced he could smell her desire for relief, he immediately crowded her, leaning in, touching her shoulder, asking her what was wrong. Her eyes first went to his hand on her shoulder, alerting Elliot that his large hand more than covered her shoulder and had actually brushed the bare skin of her neck. He was still processing a second behind her when she drew in a shaky breath. Her eyes were wide, her pupils huge when she finally met his inquisitive stare.
The sheer lust in her eyes at that moment almost killed him. His body, which had been on high alert ever since the hot dog incident and had only been re-awakened when he realized her state of arousal in the car, threatened to rebel. It was only the knowledge that the hospital elevators had alarms rigged to the stop button that prevented him from hitting it. She mistook his surprise for amusement and, thinking that he was teasing her on purpose, shoved him hard into the opposite wall. He wasn't entirely sure what she called him in the muttered string of expletives that followed, but he knew it wasn't something he wanted to be and definitely not something he wanted her to think he was. He felt bad, both for his accidental teasing and because she thought he was trying to be mean, but he knew better than to apologize. Not with the way she'd reacted in the car.
He went out of his way to avoid touching her and looking at her and thinking about her, as though that were possible with his newly discovered primal ability to spontaneously locate her and calculate the shortest route to being in contact with her. It was for both of them – because he knew that she was going to be resolving her dilemma on her own when she got home and because he somehow knew that for the first time in nine years closing his eyes and pretending that Kathy was not Kathy wasn't going to be nearly as good as he was willing to bet the real live not Kathy would be.
And despite his best efforts, his peace offering of a ride home backfired on him. The temperature had dropped during the night and he did the same chivalrous thing he'd been doing since he'd seen his father do it for his mother. He went to her side first, leaning over to unlock the door so she could get out of the cold first. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the lack of sleep, perhaps due to an unconscious need to see if his touch could garner the same spark of interest he'd seen in the elevator once again, he was much closer to her than either of them realized. As he straightened up from unlocking the car, his upper arm, by complete accident, brushed right across her breasts.
He hadn't needed to look in her eyes to see her body's instantaneous reaction to his touch. But he looked up anyway, needing to see it in her eyes as well, wanting to hold her gaze long enough that she wouldn't be able to tell herself anyone besides him was responsible. Even if it was just for a moment, he wanted to know she wanted him and he wanted her to be fully aware of it as well.
But instead of getting angry at him for throwing it in her face, she simply dropped her eyes. Her arms didn't move to cover the evidence on her chest. Had she been any less worn down by her pent up frustration at that point, she would have called him a dick, or worse, and he wouldn't have bothered to disagree. So he silently walked around to his side of the car to drive her home, feeling like a bastard.
By the time he pulled up in front of her building, he'd decided he was going to blame it on the city. If the NYPD had the cash to spring for automatic door locks like every car manufactured in the previous decade, he never would have had to opportunity to prove to his partner once and for all that he was an asshole. She didn't say a word to him as she practically ran from the car. He knew she wasn't fleeing from him; she was simply desperate to relieve the tension that had rendered her temporarily insane. He didn't blame her as he gunned the engine as soon as she disappeared into the building. He wanted to get home and into the shower to take care of his own problem as well, because he would feel far too guilty turning to Kathy. He would be betraying both of them. All three of them, actually.
In his slightly excessive speed, his reflexes were skewed. There was a yellow light ahead of him and since he was driving faster than he normally would be, he was sure he could make it. A moment later, when he realized he wouldn't, he slammed on the brakes and listened to the tires screech as they unhappily complied with his request to stop. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move, sliding from the seat to the floor with a dull thud. He flipped on the overhead light only to recognize Olivia's phone, which must have been dropped during her escape.
He sat there staring at it, not even hearing the horn blast of the car behind him. He could leave it, pretend he didn't see it, continue on his way home and let everything go the way it had been going a minute earlier. But the what-ifs started up, and he knew she might need the phone or someone might need to reach her or something might happen to the phone while in his possession that would then be his fault. With a reluctant sigh, he turned around and drove back to Olivia's.
He parked in the same spot in front of her building and dashed in behind one of her neighbors. He took it as a good omen that someone had opened the door, thus sparing him of having to buzz Olivia. She would undoubtedly know exactly who was there and would undoubtedly vent as much of her frustration as possible through the crackling, too-loud speaker, alerting the entire neighborhood to the fact that he was a jackass. Knocking on her door, however, he thought better of it. Had she told him off for ringing her, he would have had a perfectly valid reason to let the phone sit in his pocket until the next day at work.
He had a fleeting thought of running for the stairs and pretending he'd never been there.
But when her door flew open to reveal a positively irate Olivia Benson clad in a silky navy blue robe with, Elliot was positive, nothing underneath, he couldn't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.