Her left hand finds its way to the left side of the bed and she can't help but wonder if something belongs there in the void. This is why it's unhealthy to have a "side of the bed" in the first place. Olivia has never been with a man long enough to claim a side, but she still feels that remaining in the middle is probably the healthiest place to be.
Nothing is quiet, nothing around her silent. Still. Even in her head, the screaming of the city, the screech of the voices of New York.
Even now, three a.m. on a Thursday, the city reminds her how alone she is by proving through decibels how alone it isn't.
---
She says it without any forethought; it's how these things happen nowadays. "I'm really great at fucking." There's no beer to bring to her lips to hide what would have been, two years ago, a guilty smile. Instead it's a fry that's dragged through recently-married ketchup; they're at a bar and neither wants to be the first to order something a little stronger.
"What the... I'd ask you if you kiss with that mouth but-"
"I don't kiss anyone," and she shoves in another fry, elaborates without any urging from him.
He would cough if there was a drink in front of him. There isn't. There's nothing thicker that the words he speaks, "But if you did..."
"It'd be fucking great." She wants to say something about how sex is a fundamental part of being human, if not the fundamental part of being human. And if you're not good at fucking, then what's the point? But the look on his face is too great, and so she leaves it at that, lets him think what he's thinking.
It's this thing that's happening between them, best to let itself play out.
---
The building is non-smoking but it's February and so she smokes out of her bedroom window. The ashes fall to the sidewalk below, disintegrating before they reach the pavement. It's this pattern, she's had this pack for a year or two and every so often, she takes that first drag off of a clean stick and then snubs it. Enough to get by.
Tonight it's two, two straight down to the filter because it rushes in her lungs and in her blood and even the winter air singing her lips and ears isn't enough to pull her back inside. A tap and ashes flutter away. So easily.
The tiny ring at the tip of the filter dots with the efforts of the nicotine and Olivia's eyes are torn between the embers and the poison staining the cotton, her lips, her tongue.
No one will taste this on her, smell this on her.
Still, she feels just the slightest bit ashamed.
---
These moments are what it's become for her, to hold or to forget. There are far too many memories that she needs to forget and she does. The ones she keeps have his smile and his rage and his blatant, heart-wrenching honesty. There's guilt too, she holds the guilt that he carries in his eyes with her all the time because it's a powerful thing.
He doesn't know how to stop it or let it go and so neither does she. It's that, that between them.
He's too fucking beautiful, when you get right down to it and Olivia is more sure than she's been of anything that she's the only one who sees that.
"Happy anniversary," he says to her on a Thursday morning. There's a latte and a cupcake and Olivia can't help but smile. She knows, she knows what it's like to have a man that is attentive and even if that man can't be hers, she'll savor these moments.
Daintily, she sticks her finger in the frosting and licks it off slowly. Of course she knows how this affects him and that's why she does it, doesn't feel guilty at all. "Twelve... years?"
"Feels like longer," he grunts, but looks up at her from under his lashes, winks.
---
His arm across her stomach as they cross Lex at 86th; a taxi whizzes by, flipping them both off. Elliot mutters a few things under his breath, guides her to the other side of the street with a hand to her elbow.
"Who looks out for ya, Benson?" A friendly thing, something that a close comrade would say but there's something else in his voice.
She chokes a little and slides her fingers over the lighter in her pocket, wanting to light up, just to see what he would say. But Olivia is beyond that. "And who's taking care of you, Stabler?"
He can't answer, that would be too obvious.
---
They almost make it to her bed one evening, and it's by his choosing. His USMC shirt skims his shoulders when he pulls it off of his body but her fingers won't move to help.
Goddamn it, this is all wrong. It's wrong because he promised that he'd be the one to assure they'd play Frank Sinatra at her funeral and he'd be the one to pick up the pieces when she fractured inevitably again and he'd be the one who'd be there, there, there.
And if he's here now, he can't be there then.
Hands on his chest, and Elliot understands. "It's just getting too hard not too."
"Yeah," she whispers , her thumb dipping to skirt his belly button. "But not tonight."
---
She sleeps on her couch now because she can't stand the bed. Can't help picturing him in it, can't help picturing the both of them in it together and it's not good for her psyche. The sofa has become her sleeping quarters and just before she kicks off the throw pillows and removes the back cushions, Olivia thinks that this isn't so bad.
She doesn't dream of him, doesn't dream of anything.
When she wakes, it's to another day of not knowing what the hell it is she's doing.
She knows that she's alone, but not in every sense of the word.
If that's something to go on, she'll take it.