Verity

by Jessa4865

Olivia decides it's time to talk about The Letter

Verity

Fleeterberry
Spoilers: through SVU Season 22/OC Season 1
Author's Note: I've been absent from the SVU fandom for almost a decade now… Please be gentle!

"I'm just walking by to let you know,
I could never say it on the phone,
Will never let you go this time"
–The Weeknd, Blinding Lights

Maybe it was the wine. Sometimes alcohol just made her nervous and emotional and melancholic. Maybe it was the fact that she was alone. While she was happy that Noah was having a good time with his friend, she'd grown used to having him there with her where she could check in on him any time she wanted. Maybe it was her squad's most recent case. Seeing yet another life touched by tragedy was wearing on her and sometimes she wondered how much more she could take. They were all valid reasons for her to be sitting at her dining room table with tears spilling down her cheeks.

But they were all standards in her life, really, even not having Noah home because there were plenty of days when she was simply too late getting home to pick him up from the sitter's. She knew how to cope with the stressors in her life. She had plenty of practice.

What she didn't know how to cope with – never had, really – was Elliot fucking Stabler. Even when they'd worked together for twelve years, she'd never been sure which approach would work. She vacillated between soft and hard, usually disappointed that whatever response she got from him wasn't the one she wanted, even when she had no idea what it was that she wanted. She hadn't been any better at dealing with his absence. At first she firmly rejected the idea he was really gone and then she moved on to pretending he'd never been there at all. She thought she had successfully dealt with his departure, until he came back and she realized she hadn't processed it at all. She'd ignored it and denied it and partitioned off all of her feelings in the back of her mind where she wouldn't allow herself to find them.

But one look in his eyes and it all came flooding back to her so suddenly and so overwhelmingly she couldn't fucking breathe.

When she was alone, she could almost label the things she felt, the hurt, the anger, the loyalty, the betrayal… but every time she looked at him, everything was strangled by the devastating amount of love she felt for the most infuriating man in the world.

After having him back in her life for a few months, and already feeling herself starting to depend on him to be there once again, she was aware that the feelings wouldn't be denied forever. Yes, she'd loved the man, she had from the earliest days of their partnership and she was ready to admit it to herself – not him though, not yet, maybe not ever – but that love wouldn't erase the fierce anger she felt when she remembered what he did to her, what he'd missed in her life, what he'd made her face without him. He hadn't been there when she'd needed him most. He hadn't been there when she'd wanted him most. He hadn't been there at all. For ten years. She'd finally gotten to a place where she had moved on, at least she thought she had, the one time in almost twenty-five years when she truly believed she didn't miss him.

And he reappeared as suddenly as he'd left, destroyed the walls of denial she'd carefully constructed, and, naturally, rather than doing it at a time she would have been perfectly justified in telling him where he could shove it, he'd resurfaced just in time to desperately need her support. She wasn't going to call the car bomb good luck, but fucking hell, if the first time she'd seen him in ten god-damned years had been in a public venue filled with her superiors and coworkers and friends and people who would have been watching her - someday she needed to find out what genius thought that surprise would have been a good idea – she would have died. Simply died on the floor. Possibly after shooting him.

At least then she wouldn't have read the damn letter which would have spared her the dichotomy of her current emotions: to let his words erase all the pain or strangle the man for being such a moron. Part of her was so very tempted to give in to the anger, to rage, to unleash her fury the way she'd watched him do a million times. She wanted to be petty and vindictive, cut him out of her life, let him hurt and stew and wonder and cry, for a while, a long while. A decade, maybe.

She scoffed at herself as she refilled her wine glass. Yeah, she could fantasize about being mean and teaching him a lesson, but she never would. She wasn't that kind of person. She knew the dilemma would result in her forgiving him, unconditionally. She loved him too damn much to deliberately hurt him. And if exacting revenge wasn't in the cards, then she was going to have to let it go. She'd have to forgive him. She'd have to believe the words in his letter were true. She'd have to trust him.

Before she did that, she had to talk to him. She deserved to see his face and be able to read him when he explained what he'd written. He'd have to defend it, to prove he meant what she honestly couldn't quite fathom. It was perfectly understandable that he hadn't wanted to say it to her face. Hell, she could hardly believe it - didn't believe it, not yet – let alone believe that he'd found the nerve to put it in writing. The only personal thing he'd ever written to her prior to the letter that turned her world on its head consisted of three words. "Semper Fi, El" wasn't really much to go on as a writing sample. No matter how many times she'd re-read it, poured over it like it was some kind of magnum opus, the motto wasn't enough of anything to draw a comparison. She'd eventually decided that the first note had meant precisely what it said – he'd thought of her, gotten her hundreds of calls, but he was going to be faithful to his wife. She'd accepted it because that was who he was. She'd never really expected him to leave his wife.

But now, with his new letter, well, fuck, now she wasn't so sure what she believed.

She had to hear it in person, in his voice, in unrehearsed words. She'd be able to read him, his body language, his eyes, if he said it to her face. It didn't matter if it wasn't perfectly eloquent, not if it was true. And that was something she'd never be able to tell from his letter.

Draining the rest of her glass, she picked up her phone to text him. She didn't care if he was busy or if he wasn't ready to talk. She was ready and it was about damn time they did something on her schedule. And it was absolutely time to clear up this little misunderstanding that had cost them a decade of pain. His response was nearly immediate and precisely as expected, promising her he'd be right there.

She was torn as she waited. The wine was calling to her, promising her a reprieve from the intolerable nerves that took root the moment she'd invited him over. But drinking enough to actually calm herself down would probably require an entire bottle of whiskey and leave her too intoxicated for the conversation – which she realized with another nauseating swell of anxiety might be one of the most important conversations of her life. With that sobering thought in her head, she put the wine away and dropped her glass in the dishwasher. She needed her head straight. She needed utter sobriety to meet Elliot's eyes while he explained himself so she would know the truth.

The soft tap on her door made her jump. Her heart was in her throat as she moved to answer it and, for a brief moment, she wished she'd had that wine after all. Elliot wasn't much for lying, not since his return, and, in all honesty, she always believed him anyway – even when she knew he was lying.

Pulling open the door, she didn't bother with trying to smile. He'd know it was fake; it would only serve to warn him that there was reason to be wary and put him on edge.

"Hi," she forced out the word in a hoarse whisper and squeezed her hand around the door knob to stop it from shaking.

His guard came up immediately. His eyes narrowed, his shoulders tensed, his breathing hitched. "Liv?" He glanced around the room when she stepped back and allowed him entrance. "What's going on?"

After the cursory look around the apartment, his eyes met hers again. She was always shocked, no matter how many decades went by, to see that piercing blue fixed on hers. She was certain his eyes could see right into her brain, her thoughts, her heart, her soul. Although, she realized ruefully, if the words in the letter were true, he obviously couldn't read her at all.

She could only hold his intense stare for a second, letting her eyes dart down to the familiar comfort of the floor. She didn't have a decades-long history of hurt and miscommunication and love and hope and desire and betrayal with the floor. It wasn't complicated. She felt nothing looking down, but when her eyes involuntarily moved back to his, she felt everything. Yes, it had taken the most painful ten years of her life, but one of them had finally crawled out on a limb.

She hated herself for leaving him out there for so long until she remembered she'd had no intention of doing so. She'd tried to talk to him about it. He hadn't been ready at the time though, despite having given the letter to her. She knew he hadn't really intended to talk about it. He'd meant to drop it on her at that damn ceremony and then walk away – again – and leave her no way to contact him – again.

But he had given it to her and he had stayed and he had signed a two year lease and he took her phone calls, more reliably now than when they'd been partners. She desperately hoped pushing the issue wasn't going to blow up in her face.

She cleared her throat and motioned at the dining room table where the letter was lying. "I want to talk about it."

She watched him pull his bottom lip between his teeth as he winced. "We don't have to, Liv."

Oh, hell no. The more he tried to get out of it, the more desperate she would become, the more convoluted her thought process would get. If he didn't want to talk about it, did that mean it was true? Or it wasn't true? Or his words had been meant as some sort of code and actually had nothing to do with the surface meaning she was trying to understand? "We need to talk about it." For her mental health, if nothing else.

"No, we really don't." He took a step backward toward the door.

The idea that he was trying to dodge her again sparked her anger. "Damn it, Elliot, if you walk away from me right now, don't bother coming back."

She watched the emotions dance over his face, reminding her of those tense, silent moments after he'd blurted out that he loved her. He was panicking, his fight or flight response gearing up, and she suspected if she didn't get between him and the door he would likely let that ultimatum be the last words ever spoken between them.

Her assessment was dead on, she noted, as he turned on his heel and made one purposeful stride toward the door. She managed to spin around and plant herself directly in his path. And then there was another long, still moment during which she watched him deflate. His head dropped, his shoulders rolled forward, his knees buckled. He was on the floor before she could move, his face cradled in his hands.

"Jesus, Elliot, what-" She squatted down onto the floor beside him, reaching out for his arms, intending to try to make eye contact.

But he lifted his head first, dragging his hands down his face until he ran out of real estate. His hands folded together then, his fingers interlacing so tightly the tendons stood out on the backs of his hands, his chest and shoulders flexing with the effort he was putting into crushing his hands together. When his eyes finally climbed back to hers, she saw nothing except resolve.

He shook his head and his eyes slid downward once again. "I never should have given you that letter. Hell, I never should have written it." He shook his head again as though trying to force his thoughts into a better order, his adrenaline-fueled energy made him fidget like a bored child. "I thought I'd be halfway around the world when you read it."

"But you did give it to me and you're still here."

She reached for his hands again, but he pulled them out of reach, putting them on his thighs and pushing himself back to his feet. She followed suit, standing up a little too quickly and causing the head rush she would have anticipated had she not been entirely focused on keeping Elliot from disappearing for ten more years. Her balance wavered as her vision faded momentarily, her arms reaching blindly for purchase to prevent her from winding up back on the floor.

He was there in a heartbeat, his arms slipping under her outstretched hands and giving her the contact he'd just denied, his concern for her overriding his own distress. "Liv, what's wrong?"

Her hands wrapped around his forearms, trying to believe she was steadying herself rather than wanting to feel the way his muscles flexed at her touch. "I'm fine, just stood up too fast."

He sized her, his grip on her loosening the slightest while he waited to see if she could stand on her own. As much as she wanted to stay there, to delight in the moment of being close enough to smell his cologne with every breath, to reassure herself that he was really back in her life and frequently close enough to touch, to believe finally that the previous few months hadn't been some impossibly detailed hallucination, her own pride overrode everything else. She pushed at his arms and stepped back. Son of a bitch wasn't going to distract her. She wasn't going to let him.

"Will you talk to me, please? Give me five minutes and if you still want to leave, you can leave." She tried to catch his eyes again and failed, only then realizing that her plea might have worked better if she had still been in physical contact with him.

He squeezed his eyes closed before he let out a deep sigh. "Never could say no to you." He turned away, this time moving to the couch and taking a seat rather than going for the door.

Satisfied she'd won the first point, she took a deep breath and joined him on the couch. "I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable, Elliot, I'm trying to understand." She shook her head, copying his earlier actions with the hope the motion would settle her thoughts into coherence. It didn't work. Instead she couldn't remember anything she meant to ask and so simply stared at the man who, despite hurting her more than anyone ever had, remained the only person she truly trusted.

"That night, after I shot, after I killed-" his voice choked up and he cleared his throat before he continued. "After Jenna, I stood outside your door for hours. I heard you calling me, all the messages you left, I almost knocked a hundred times."

"Why didn't you?" Her own voice came out in a forced whisper, her emotions strangling her at the thought that they were actually going to talk about this – and that this time it would be in private, in her home, where there was no way she could run away and nothing to stop him from following her if she tried.

He reached out suddenly and grabbed her hand, gripping it painfully before gently rubbing his thumb over her wrist. "Until I saw you on the street that night, when we talked in the hospital, fuck," he jumped up so quickly she jerked in surprise as she tried to follow the time jump of a decade in his disjointed thought process. He made it as far as the mantelpiece where he rested his elbows as he buried his face in his hands again. "I never meant to hurt you."

She wanted to stay calm and understanding to encourage him to keep talking, but that instinct was fading behind her fierce anger once again. "What the fuck did you mean to do then?"

Because really, no matter what he'd said in the letter, no matter how he'd behaved since he'd been back, she couldn't string together any sort of narrative that explained his departure, and the way he went about it, as anything besides an attempt to hurt her.

He raised his head from his hands, but didn't turn around. If she hadn't been boring holes in the back of his skull, she might have missed the slight turn of his head as he perused the pictures that lined her mantle. While she'd once been confident in her ability to predict where his mind was, she couldn't claim that skill anymore. He'd changed a lot in ten years. And while she would have guessed he was ruminating on the fact that pictures of the two of them had been replaced with pictures of Noah, she was surprised when he picked up one of the frames and nodded at it.

"When you invited me over, I thought maybe you were going to introduce us."

She heard the insult that she hadn't intended. The only time the two had been in close proximity, Elliot wasn't planning on staying, and so it wouldn't have made any sense to introduce them. And while that was a valid excuse and even possibly true, the fact was that she had no idea how to introduce Elliot to her son. A coworker, ex-coworker, old friend, current friend, someone who might be more if they ever got around to pulling their heads out of their asses?

"He's not here."

"Yeah, I got that." He set the frame back down. "Does it drive you crazy that he looks like his father, I mean, he doesn't look anything like you."

His comment threw her. Fin had told her about meeting up with Elliot, had admitted to her that he'd mentioned Noah, but apparently, had been true to his word that he hadn't revealed much. Elliot had no idea that Noah was adopted and for the time being she felt no compulsion to correct his assumption. If they were going to catch up on all the time they'd missed in each other's lives, they were starting at the beginning, where Elliot had to be vulnerable and explain why he'd decided they had to miss all that time in the first place.

"I didn't knock because I knew you'd answer and you'd invite me in and I would have reached for you and ruined everything."

It took her a moment to catch up, trying to sift through multiple conversations they were having simultaneously, and realize he was back to Jenna. "How would leaning on your partner of twelve years after a traumatic shoot have ruined anything?" She could practically feel the knife twisting in her back at everything he'd said so far – about waiting outside her door that night, about almost turning to her for comfort – knowing that he'd instead turned his back on her and run home to his wife. He'd had a family to run to, she'd had no one. She'd been there, been in the same mortal danger, had been forced to watch people die once again, and instead of having her partner to commiserate with, she'd been abandoned by the one person on Earth she'd thought would never leave her. She choked back the sob, blinked back the tears, but she couldn't do anything about the way her lips turned down and her chin trembled.

He moved away from the photos, dropping heavily into the armchair. "When I hinted at how I felt, you always ran away, I knew you didn't feel the same, so if I'd actually done it, told you I needed you, we both know what would have happened."

It was like the hospital all over again as she tried to string words together in some semblance of an answer when all she wanted to do was sob. When the pain of losing him and the thought of how he'd abandoned her were so strong they felt like hands wrapped around her throat, choking the air out of her lungs, making it nearly impossible to force out whole words, let alone a coherent sentence. "You're the one who ran away."

"I beat you to the punch." He looked at her then, she could feel the weight of his stare, but she didn't give in, didn't look up, didn't let him see how much he'd hurt her, didn't want him to know she'd had the thought of running just a few minutes earlier.

She shook her head again, at his words, at her recognition that he wasn't necessarily wrong, at the notion that she'd had any part, even unintentionally, in making him leave that way he had. "No, you're wrong."

"I tried to tell you after the Gitano case, Liv, and you got yourself reassigned that same fucking night." He moved again, joining her on the couch again, closer this time, close enough to touch her cheek and turn her to face him. "What would have happened if I brought it up again? Would you have believed me? If I'd told you the truth? Would you have let me stay?" He waited for a moment, not reacting to the tears she could no longer hide. "No, you would have sent me home to her."

"You were married," she breathed the words out, perhaps fully grasping for the first time that while he had been married at the time, he no longer was. It was the stock statement she'd made a million times, her excuse for everything, her shield against the pain of having loved him so damn much for so damn long without getting anything from him in return. That was always her excuse for him. If he hadn't been married, he might have loved her back.

His eyes held hers, that same intense stare that blinded her from everything else. "I was in love with you."

She closed her eyes at the words, words he'd said twice and written once, words that she'd desperately wanted to hear for so many years, words that she still couldn't quite believe, words that set a shiver through her nonetheless.

She shook her head and had to try three times before she could get any kind of sound whatsoever past the lump in her throat. "You were in love with her, not me. You loved your family."

"Why would I say it if it wasn't true?" His palm stayed on her cheek, his thumb on the opposite side of her jaw so she couldn't turn away. "I swear to God, Olivia, I had no idea you felt it too until I came back, until I saw your face that night and saw how devastated you were when you looked at me. That's why I decided to give you the letter after all."

She didn't understand anything. Not one damn thing. She'd asked him to come over to explain himself, expecting she'd be on the offensive and able to force some kind of truth out of him once and for all, and instead she was half a breath away from sobbing inconsolably in his arms at the possibility that the letter was true, that he'd been in love with her and had thought his feelings for her were going to ruin their friendship. But still, reality, her reality, where she was the one with the unrequited feelings, wouldn't be denied. "How could you not know, El? Cragen knew. The entire fucking precinct knew. Everyone we ever interviewed knew. Kathy knew. Jesus, even your fucking kids knew."

He shrugged, his hand dropping from her face as he knotted his fingers together in his lap. "Sometimes I thought maybe, but when it came up, you always pulled back."

"You were always married when it came up." She cleared her throat again and finally found her anger and her normal voice instead of the heartbroken whisper. "And when you were separated, Kathy wound up pregnant, so I doubt you were thinking about me all that much."

He sat up again and stared back at her, holding her eyes with his and her cheek with his hand and she found she had no choice but to believe him. "I'm an idiot and an asshole and I make a lot more stupid mistakes than everyone else, but I love you, Olivia. I loved you then and I love you now and I will love you until the day I die. So hate me or don't believe me or do whatever you want to do with it, but don't tell me how I feel about you." He flopped back against the couch again, swallowing hard and closing his eyes. "This is exactly why I didn't want to talk about it."

She sagged back against the couch as well, emotionally and physically exhausted and not sure she had any more clarity than an hour earlier. She couldn't even quite understand what she was hearing. "It shouldn't be this hard."

"Nothing worth having is easy, Liv." His hand moved across the space between them to fold around hers. When he spoke again, his voice sounded closer, and when she opened her eyes, she saw it was because he'd turned his head toward her. "Please tell me you believe me. You don't have to forgive me, but, please-"

She nodded, realizing only after she responded that she did believe him. "And you believe me?"

A smirk crossed his face. "About what? I don't recall you telling me anything."

She hadn't, not in so many words, but they were sitting there holding hands with tears drying on their cheeks after fighting about their relationship, so she imagined he'd finally figured out what she'd assumed he'd known for years, what everyone else had known the entire time they'd worked together. She smiled back. "You are an idiot and an asshole, El, but I love you anyway. I always have."

His hand squeezed hers as a wide smile spread across his face. "This is really not what I expected when I came here."

"Didn't think we'd get into some emotional argument and get all upset and then make up?" She raised her eyebrow, realizing as she said it that likely half of their interactions followed the same path.

"Well, when you put it that way." He shifted his hand around until his fingers laced through hers. "Can I tell you the real reason we were coming to your ceremony that night?"

All of a sudden, the catharsis she'd thought they'd just found was erased and her stomach knotted in dread. "Oh, fuck, Elliot, I just started to forgive you, please don't piss me off again."

"I do appreciate you finally being honest with me, Liv." He shifted over until their hands were pressed between their sides. "Kathy never believed I broke off contact with you."

She winced, remembering the words of a woman on her deathbed who might have been her friend had they not both been in love with the same man. "Yeah, I heard her."

"That night wasn't the first time she brought it up. Like I said, she never believed me. She said she'd know if she saw you." He shrugged and then let go of her hand in favor of sliding his arm around her shoulders. "Of course, she didn't tell me that until after we got here." His fingers played lightly along her arm and she found the contact hypnotic. "I was coming back to see you one last time, to give you that letter so you'd know why I left, but, Christ, Liv," he leaned his head against hers before he continued. "I don't think I would have been able to do it a second time. I think she knew that. I think maybe she expected me to stay here."

She was trying to concentrate on his words, on what he was telling her, but she was so distracted by all the contact between them she could barely make sense of it. His arm was still around her and his hand was resting on her shoulder and his head was leaning against hers and his breath was falling across her neck. She was just getting more confused with every word. "You said you were happy in Italy."

"She was happy. I was miserable. I missed you." His hand moved from her shoulder, his fingers sifting through her hair and angling her head to face him. "I missed you every minute of every day."

Fresh tears were gathering in his eyes, but he was staring right at her, not trying to duck or hide or look away, and she knew right then she had gotten what she'd been looking for when she called him. The truth. His logic had been flawed, but he really hadn't meant to hurt her. He'd been torturing himself all that time, but had no idea she'd been suffering right along with him.

She felt her chin start to tremble again and found the lump had returned to her throat, but she had to give him something in return for all the things he'd finally spelled out for her. "I thought I was going to die when Cragen told me you'd quit." She shook her head, a new wave of pain cresting like it was happening all over again. "I felt like I couldn't breathe. I –" Her words cut off as the sob escaped, her mind unhappily returning to that horrible day, looking around she saw the interrogation room as if she were back there, feeling the suffocating pain of losing him anew. She tried and failed to speak, not able to convey what she was going through, instead processing the loss of her partner and friend for real this time, letting the pain wash over her as she thought of all those days she'd gone through without him – the early ones when she'd forget however briefly that he was gone until she got to work and saw his empty desk, the later ones when she'd try to pretend he'd never been there at all, the terrifying ones when she hadn't expected to survive and had desperately thought of him as though she might be able to conjure him from sheer will, the recent ones when she accepted that he was gone but still found herself thinking of him and what he would think of her life and her son and her accomplishments.

She'd never really grieved for him, for the loss of that person she'd been as his partner, but now, feeling his arms close around her as he pulled her into his chest, she could finally let it out, release the pain that she'd kept pent up inside for so long she didn't remember what it was like to not feel it. She'd never cried so hard in her life and she could count on one hand the number of times she'd been in his arms, but somehow, everything about it felt right and safe and familiar. It felt like home, the home she'd always looked for and never found. The pain and the anger and the grief and the loss and all of it – all of the things she'd felt and tried to deny, all of the things that had been stirred up when he returned and she still hadn't been able to process because of the situation – it just drained away. Poured out of her in her tears and evaporated away until it was just him and her clinging to each other, the beautiful truth finally exposed in air between them.

When she'd settled, when the sobs and the sniffles and the hiccups were gone, she stayed right where she was, cuddled in his lap where he'd pulled her while she'd been too hysterical to notice. Her head was resting against his chest, her face turned into the gap between the open top buttons of his shirt. One of his hands was on her back, the other in her hair, the latter gently stroking while he continued to shush her. She wanted to stay there forever, to make up for all the time they'd lost with each other by being selfish and stupid and stubborn.

But she knew she couldn't and she reluctantly found herself sitting up, looking at her wrist to gauge the time. "Noah went to a movie with a friend's family and they're supposed to be back around eight."

Elliot nodded, his arms reluctantly releasing her as he moved to stand. "Ok, I'll call you tomorrow." He was halfway to the door before she managed to catch up to him.

"Wait, that's not-" Her words cut off as his hands cupped her cheeks.

"I never would have left you if I'd known, Liv." His eyes stared so intently into hers she couldn't quite remember how to breathe. "And now that I know, I'll never leave you again."

She gasped at the brutal honesty and force of his words, at the conviction in his voice, at the idea that somehow the floodgates had opened on him and he wasn't going to hold back from her anymore. She wanted to extend him the same courtesy and mend any hurt she might have caused by unintentionally implying she wanted him to leave. "If you're not in a hurry, El, I'd like you to stick around so you can meet Noah."

He stared at her, searched her eyes, looked for a tell, a hint that she didn't mean it. A happy smile slowly spread across his face. "Really?"

She nodded, once again exhausted by the emotional roller coaster she'd been on, and leaned on the wall behind her. "Really."

And then his hands were braced against the wall on either side of her head, his body so close to hers she could feel the heat of him through his clothes. She gasped again, adrenaline surging at the idea of finally kissing the man she'd dreamt of kissing for over twenty years, her mind immediately working on how they could possibly have sex before her son arrived home. "Olivia?"

It took her a moment to realize he'd spoken and she had to fight to gather her thoughts together. "Elliot?"

He leaned in, his body pressing fully into hers, his face so close she couldn't focus on his features anymore. "I really want to kiss you, but I'm not going to without permission."

She grinned, realizing that he was going to let her have all the control to make up for the bad decision he'd made for both of them. She reached up to grab his collar and tug him closer. "Oh, you have it."

His lips curved up in a smile as he moved to close the distance between them, distance that never should have existed, distance that would never be there again.