Elliot
Elliot glanced up as his partner came into the squad room fifteen minutes late, a sparkle in her eyes, and a slight bounce to her steps. Anyone else would not have noticed, but since he was her partner, and he'd made a concerted effort to notice any minute changes in his partner, he did. "Had a good night?" he asked, trying for nonchalance, but horribly failing if the smirk on her face was any indication.
"Yep, a good night." Short, tight sentence. She wasn't angry with him. It was more about her trying to perk his interest more, or at least, that's what Elliot thought. He was silent a moment, trying to resist.
Trying and failing.
"Care to elaborate?" he prodded.
Her small smile widened and the corners of her eyes crinkled up in merriment, seemingly enjoying his torture. Why men were considered the more vicious of the species he'd never know. Women, and in particular, this woman, could run circles around his poor gender.
Finally, after what seemed like forever of just looking at him over their desks, paperwork untouched, computer not turned on, she said, "I had a good time. For the first time in a while. Robert took me to Coney Island. I've never been. Don't give me that look! I'm just not one for lights and screaming. I get that enough on the job, Elliot."
She got up and turned to get a cup of coffee. She detoured by his desk and lightly slapped his shoulder. The pot he'd started ten minutes before had finally finished percolating. He watched her pour a cup, add her two sugars, and one half-and-half and come back to her desk. His heart did a little flip when he saw she did not come back with a second cup. He wanted to ask, "forget something?" but that would be construed as sexist, and the last thing he needed was to get on Olivia's bad side at seven thirty in the morning.
He passed her desk without a word and made himself a cup of coffee. Childishly, he thought, taking a sip as he sat down, it didn't taste as good as when she made it. His eyes lit on her face for a moment unobserved as she turned on her department-issued laptop. His gaze traveled across her face, from the light brush of her hair tickling her forehead and caressing the curve of her cheek, down and around to the dusting of a light blush applied to the apple of her cheek and nose, to the shiny gloss settled on the soft lines of her lips, and, unbidden, something tightened low in his belly, a sensation he'd not had since a darkened front porch intimate conversation four years ago. Because he hadn't let it.
Because to have gone there—then—would have changed everything. And at that time, he'd had so much rapidly changing he had needed stability the way a thirsty man needed water. Stability in the form of the comfort and easiness of his oldest and most treasured friendship. And then things had changed, again, in the form of his return back to his wife after getting her pregnant, again. He loved his wife, he really did, but if he were honest with himself, Elliot didn't think he'd have gone back if she hadn't gotten pregnant. But she had and he was now ensconced in the life that had always been his for as long as he could remember, more than half his life.
"What? Do I have lipstick on my teeth or something?" Olivia joked, looking at him, and with a start, Elliot realized he'd been caught. Staring.
Shit.
"No, just thinking about something. And you're in my line of sight." That seemed to satisfy her because she went back to typing some report or something. At least, that's what he thought she was doing until he heard an aborted snort from her across their desks, and a small smile appeared on her face. "Care to share with the class?"
Olivia glanced up quickly before resuming her typing. "Mind your own business, Stabler," she said playfully and then promptly laughed out loud at whatever she was reading on the screen.
"What is so funny?" Curiosity peaked, Elliot got up and moved to her side, behind her chair. He leaned in to read her screen. If she hadn't wanted him to, he would have gotten a swift elbow to the gut, so obviously it was fine with his partner. He grasped the back of her chair for stability and leaned in, his face next to hers as he tried to read the screen. Unfortunately, the print was too small and he remembered belatedly, that Olivia's eyesight had improved slightly with age, while his had not.
And he refused to go to the optometrist to get a prescription for glasses.
He moved back slightly, but not before their lips almost touched. Once again, his heart climbed into his throat and tried to jump out of his mouth, but he forced it back. Olivia, on the other hand, pushed her seat back slightly, just enough to give them both some breathing room and so that when she looked into his eyes, it wasn't completely uncomfortable.
"Robert was telling me about something that happened to the night-shift. One of his buddies, Adams, got called to the scene of a robbery/home invasion where the criminal drove into the house, after mistaking gas for brakes and got stuck in the window. He tried to get out, but the Lexus was a newer model, with that new automatic shutoff when someone gets into a front-end collision. Rob loves cars, and he said the damnedest thing is, that if the guy had just stolen a piece of crap, he would have been able to back out, but because he stole a newer Lexus, the car stopped on impact and the reset button was in the trunk." Olivia chuckled.
Elliot moved back, but still close enough to see her eyes and watched as a bit of heat entered her gaze and her cheeks flushed slightly. He glanced at her screen as he moved behind her to go back to his desk. Stupid, childish, invasive, he knew, but he did it anyway. He caught one or two words and that was enough. Kisses. Hard. He got the gist and now he was wishing he hadn't glanced at the chat window opened on the screen. Why the thought of Olivia and kisses and Robert bothered him, Elliot didn't know. Or rather, he didn't want to explore.
Olivia
Still high on the incredible evening she'd had, Olivia sauntered into the squad room, barely stilling the excessive energy coursing through her body. Third date with Rob. A third date. Olivia couldn't remember the last time she had a third date with anyone. At least two years ago. Between work and scheduling, making plans and having to cancel them over and over and over, either the guy became antagonistic and left, or she just didn't want to put in the effort into a task that she knew would lead to nowhere.
Olivia moved past her partner, sat down in her office chair and pulled in close to her desk. Not turning on her laptop, not turning on her lamp, not fishing out a pencil or pen—all things normal in her everyday routine. No, instead Olivia sat contemplating the wonderful night she'd had.
The night before was one of her best third dates ever. Simple, fun, uncomplicated. No awkward pauses, no scrambling to find something to say to fill a silence. No looking anywhere but your date, praying for the evening to end quickly. Many a time in the past, Olivia had wished Elliot would call and have a body somewhere, anywhere, because that's how bad it was.
At one point in her life, early on in this hellacious dating game, Olivia had been a romantic, pragmatic, but still, she believed in finding the one person you were meant to be with. Until SVU. Until meeting Elliot. Well, that wasn't true. Early on in their relationship, they were just friends, partners. But when he separated from his wife, and Olivia realized the line between partner and friend could get blurred, and she realized the reason for the tension between them was feelings for him, all that went down the drain.
"Had a good night?" Elliot asked. Olivia didn't answer right away, wanting to draw out the suspense. And hey, after all, since it was her date, she really didn't have to tell him anything, now did she? But she'd never been much for games, so she'd only let him sweat it out for a few more minutes.
"Care to elaborate?" he prodded. Olivia got the sense they were back in high school, with a mental voice translating his words to "Care to share with the class?" She smirked at him and at her internal monologue.
Elliot's eyebrows rose in prodding and she replied shortly, "Yep, a good night." She hummed a tinny bit under her breath, excited energy fighting to get out any way it could. It seemed like an interminable amount of time before she responded with more than a four-word answer.
Finally, after what seemed like forever of just looking at him over their desks, paperwork untouched, computer still not turned on, she said, "I had a good time. For the first time in a while. Robert took me to Coney Island. I've never been." Olivia booted up her laptop.
Elliot shot her an incredulous look, as if it were inconceivable that a forty-something New Yorker could have possibly missed seeing the lights and high volume of people, mostly out-of-staters. "Don't give me that look! I'm just not one for lights and screaming. I get that enough on the job, Elliot," she scolded lightly, getting up to get herself a cup of coffee when she heard the percolator finish its job. She batted him on the shoulder with her hand as she detoured near him before moving on to the coffee station.
As she poured herself a cup, added her two sugars and a half-and-half, instinctive and automatic, Olivia lost herself for a few minutes again in last night's fairy-tale evening. It had been perfect. Easy. Magical. Fun. She could swear she could still feel Robert's lips on hers…
She returned back to her desk on autopilot, a small smile still playing unknowingly over her face. Elliot gave her a weird look and there was something in his eyes, just a split second of something, and then it was gone. Olivia gave a mental shrug. If El wanted to talk, he'd talk. She wasn't going to push him. She wasn't ready to deal with any of it, not that she knew what it was.
He passed by her to get his own cup of coffee and after a few minutes, sat back down and just…stared. As she booted up her laptop. Turned on her lap. Searched a pen out of her desk drawer. Olivia glanced up at him in askance, and caught something in his eyes, again, but this time different. She licked her lips, feeling the gloss on them slick across her tongue. The look in his eyes deepened, darkened, and her stomach flipped.
"What? Do I have lipstick on my teeth or something?" she joked, trying to lighten the moment. The expression cleared and she didn't think he'd even realized he'd looked at her, that way.
It was replaced by an oh shit panicky expression, before it cleared in a second later. She watched him straighten up in the chair. "No, just thinking about something. And you're in my line of sight."
Uh, huh, she thought. She wasn't going to interpret his first look as she'd caught him staring. She couldn't afford it. Olivia's computer finally finished booting up (damn security) and she logged on and began working, responding to emails, when instant messenger popped up on her screen. It was from Robert.
RMAnders: I am so tired this morning. Last night's late activities had me sleepless. And when I did finally get to bed, all I dreamed about was you.
OABenson: Hope it was a good dream.
RMAnders: Oh, all good, baby. All good… You up tomorrow for a repeat of last night, dinner and a walk through Central Park? 24-hour shift will give me plenty to think about where to take you next. What else haven't you been to in our fair city? One sec, my buddy Ralphie's here. BRB.
Olivia waited patiently, switching screens back to her email account and continuing to reply to requests. Robert's IM screen popped back up. She read silently and she almost snorted before tampering it down.
"Care to share with the class?" Elliot asked.
Olivia glanced up at him. "Mind your own business, Stabler," she said playfully. A laugh bubbled out of her at his description of an incident his friend Ralphie responded to. He didn't know it, but she already knew Ralphie Adams. He was a paramedic with a wicked sense of humor, deadpan and dry. Funny as hell.
"What is so funny?" Elliot inquired, his curiosity prodded. He moved to around her desk, behind her and leaned in close to Olivia, cheek close to cheek and attempted to read the screen. She smiled internally, knowing El wouldn't be able to read the words. His vision had worsened perceptibly over the past few years, and as she watched him squint slightly before giving up, the stubborn man had refused to see someone about glasses or contacts. Ah, vanity. The downfall of many a man.
Elliot moved away slightly, but turned his head and suddenly their lips were almost touching within several inches of each other. They'd that close before, but not since a tension-filled locker room conversation had she felt a pull, hard and full, to lift her lips just those few inches and kiss him. To taste and take. A knot formed and tightened in her belly, low and heated.
A flicker of something out of the corner of her eye brought her back to just where they were, and she pulled back, pushing her chair slightly in the opposite direction her hormones were directing her to help alleviate the tension.
As if nothing had happened, Olivia described the situation Adams had been called to last night. Elliot knew the paramedic also and by the time she was finished describing the incident, the tension had dissipated and all was back to normal. He smiled, amused at the story, and pushed himself back from her space, releasing the back of her chair, but not before his fingers brushed her shoulder and for another second, that ball of heat tightened low and flashed through her body. Christ, she hadn't had that reaction in a while, a long while.
Olivia's attention was reacquired by Robert's words on the IM window.
RMAnders: I want to kiss you. Now. Hard. I didn't get enough of those lips last night.
She felt Elliot moving behind her, around, to get back to his desk, but her attention was captured by another—equally hard—tight knot of heat that formed in her belly at Robert's words on the screen.
OABenson: Robert! Stop talking about that! Who knows who's monitoring the messaging system.
It wasn't a question. She could picture him, sitting on his bunk, reading her words, laughing at her embarrassment and alarm.
RMAnders: You didn't answer my question.
Olivia was confused for a second and then she remembered.
OABenson: Yes. Tomorrow, 7pm. Barring any overtime for cases.
RMAnders: See you later, Benson.
Olivia closed out the messaging window with a smile inside, only a small smirk gracing the outside. This thing with Robert was going well. Unlike many of her previous relationships. Unlike the impossibility of Elliot.
Little girls are taught at an early age, starting with those Disney princess movies, that the boy always gets the girl, or rather the girl always gets her dream boy, and they live happily ever after. But every little girl grows up and learns the harsh truth: that sometimes they can't always have what they want. Olivia had learned that jarring lesson in spades.
Loving a married man.
If not for the fact the man was already long dead, she'd kill Walt Disney for creating the happily ever after effect. Sometimes, damn it, happily ever after wasn't in the cards. And that could not be more apparent than in her case. Olivia couldn't remember exactly when her feelings changed for Elliot; she couldn't put a date, a timetable on the moment, but she remembered when she acknowledged those feelings to herself. In a shadow-lit warehouse, tension screaming in the air just as he screamed at her to pull the trigger, and the sheer act of her hand shaking should have told him just how much she cared, because God help her, she couldn't have pulled that trigger.
And for a brief moment in time, after she came back from Comp Crimes, and then again, from Oregon, she thought, her innermost heart, the smallest piece of her whispered quietly, maybe, maybe we'll have a chance. When…
He divorces his wife.
Even to herself she couldn't say the words. Even to herself. Because that would have meant things like hope and possibility and potential. And when he finally did go back to his wife, because it always happens that way, because you always go back to what's familiar, it still hurt like a bitch to have that hope dashed, but it wasn't as bad as if she had broached it with him, if she'd taken a chance and leaped into those unknown depths, those murky waters.
Look before you leap.
Thank God she hadn't leaped.
And so Olivia had started the dating game again, this time very sporadically, even more so than before, to attempt to get her mind off of what she could not have. And all those nowhere-dates had led her to this. To Robert. The lunch with Melinda and her friends was originally supposed to be a date with a guy whose name she couldn't even remember now. But he had canceled.
Surprise, surprise.
If not for that, she'd never have met Rob and she wouldn't be where she was now – tentatively, cautiously happy.
Three dates. Three dates and Olivia was having more fun and enjoying this fledgling romance more than most any other before it. It wasn't love, but it had the possibility to develop into it. For the first time in a long time, she could see herself with Rob down the road, three months from now, three years from now. And there hadn't been many relationships that she'd felt that way about. In fact, she could count on one hand the times she'd felt this way.
The future with Robert was uncertain, but it held potential, and possibility, and hope.