Prompt #34: Elliot and Olivia revisit the "Olivia's funeral" comment from Bernie

Baggage

~oOo~

"Elliot, your partner's here." Bernie's voice calls from the other room, sounding strong and assured despite her years. She's been blossoming here, near her family, near him, and sometimes he still has a hard time accepting he can be a good influence, that even though his job is often ruthless and violent, it doesn't mean he is.

He wasted so much time keeping his distance…

Once he processes her message, though, Elliot feels puzzled. He wasn't expecting Bell to show up today. They'd just finished a major operation last night, and she'd sent him home with a raised eyebrow and a 'get your ass out of here, Stabler' followed by a smirk and 'go treat Captain Benson to some dinner, lord knows the woman's earned it'. She'd seemed truly happy for them when she learned of their relationship — in the middle of a case, no less, because they'd both behaved as the professional cops they were, right up until the moment some asshole decided to ask her out and he couldn't stop his hand from reaching for her and telling him off. Just the way she used to let him back when they were just partners.

Elliot smirks at the memory, they'd never been just partners, and his Sergeant had been such a good sport about everything, even when her own life certainly felt like the eye of a hurricane. So he hurries out, not to keep her waiting any longer.

"...then Joe came in, and the fun was over, but we didn't mind." His mother is saying from her place near the stove — is she making tea yet again? — her voice is playful and airy, lost to a memory of ages past.

He already knows every single story she likes to tell, be it about his childhood or her own, she'll go on and on about them to anyone who'll listen. It's not Bell listening from her spot at the table, though, and that's what catches his attention. It's Olivia, beautiful, gracious Olivia, sitting there in her light summer dress and her long legs and long tresses. Even though they've been officially together for a couple of months now, it still feels new sometimes, when she catches him by surprise. Or maybe the reason he can feel his breath catch is the week and a half they've been out of touch because of his last assignment. She's smiling at Bernie, now, seemingly captivated by her tale, and all he wants to do is wrap her up in his arms and make up for lost time.

But he can't, no, not when his mother's here. Not when she'd confused Olivia's role in his life. Again. He hadn't been in his right mind last year, hadn't recognized the danger of a faulty memory then, but he was growing worried now. This wasn't a symptom of Bipolar Disorder, and they've been making sure she takes all of her meds for as long as she's been with them. Bernie hasn't mistaken anybody else's names as of yet, but he decides to keep better track of how her memory is doing from now on.

"Oh, Elliot, finally!" Bernie enthused. "Olivia's tea is almost ready, and I'm off to lunch with Katie. Eli should be back soon, so don't—"

She's interrupted by his daughter coming into the apartment.

"Liv," it's Kathleen's turn to sound excited, "I'm so glad to see you."

Even if she hadn't said it, it would've been obvious by the way she rushes towards Olivia and wraps her up in a bear hug.

"Hi, darling." Olivia hugs back, getting up from her chair and turning a little to accommodate the gesture.

From his position, he can now see Olivia's closed eyes and peaceful expression as she squeezes his second child close, and he has to suddenly tighten his hands into fists at the sudden onslaught of feeling swirling in his chest.

"Alright, I know Olivia's your favorite, but at least acknowledge your old man too, won't you?" he quips, breaking his own tension.

Kathleen rolls her eyes good-naturedly before hugging him too. After a few seconds, he pushes her back jokingly. "Okay, enough of your sloppy seconds."

"G'bye, Dad, always glad to see you." She lifts an eyebrow, pointedly, before turning back to Liv and kissing her on the cheek. "Bye, Olivia."

Olivia's contented, "Bye, sweetheart," is muffled by his theatrical huff.

"C'mon, grandma, I fear I'm no longer welcome here," Katie says merrily.

"Oh, don't mind your father, dear," Bernie placates, meeting her granddaughter by the door, "he's always liked to behave like a jealous prick. Once, we were—" the sound of the door closing saves him from the indignity that was sure to follow, and Olivia lets out a guffaw from behind her hands.

It's enough to draw him out of his embarrassed state and closer to her, close enough to pull on her forearms so her hands drop from her face, and he's rewarded by her brilliant smile. "Hi," she says in a small, husky voice.

"Hey," he rumbles, letting his own hands trail down her arms to clasp around hers. He'd missed this carefree smile of hers, and not just during the decade he was gone. It still feels surreal, being able to be this close to her, to have her back in his life as someone he can hold. "I don't blame her, you know."

Olivia furrows her brow adorably in confusion, tilting her head, so he lets go of her left hand to grasp some of her silky hair and pull it away from her face.

"Kathleen," he clarifies at last, "I don't blame her for favoring you."

Olivia puffs out an impatient breath, disentangling their limbs and settling herself on his couch, so he knows he has pushed her out of her comfort zone. Intuitively, he changes the subject.

"Where's Noah?" he asks, going to fetch two mugs for the now scalding peppermint tea.

"School," she relaxes, turning on her side to watch him, "he's been cast as one of the monkeys in the school's version of The Jungle Book, so he's been staying late twice a week for rehearsal."

The tea mugs are all set, so he takes them to her, placing them on the coffee table, before sitting down beside her.

"Bet all those stretching exercises are gonna come in handy now, huh?" he asks, daring to rest his hand on the cotton of her covered thigh.

Olivia smirks, reaching for her mug. "That's what I told him when he complained he wasn't cast as Baloo. Bears aren't that flexible."

He mirrors her movements, smirking back. "What'd he say to that?"

The bright-eyed, playful look she gives him from beneath her eyelashes as she sips on the peppermint almost makes him choke on his tea. "He said he should have been cast as either Kaa or Shere Kan, then," she deadpans.

He swallows quickly before letting out a hearty laugh. "Smart kid."

She rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. "Tell me about it."

He wants to tell her all about it: about how lucky Noah is to have been given her as a mom, about how sorry he is he wasn't there to see it happen in real-time, about how much of her mannerisms and her cleverness he can see in the young boy, genetics be damned. But Olivia had her share of abandonment issues even before he'd added to the pile, and he knows that's the fastest route to scare her away. Better to keep it light…

"I think my mom's losing her memory," he spits out, like a bull in a china shop, startling her into spilling some of the hot tea on her fingers. "Crap," he curses, instinctively reaching for both their mugs and quickly laying them back on the coffee table, before pulling her injured fingertips into his mouth to alleviate the burn.

Olivia hisses when he switches fingers, murmuring a hasty apology in between tasks.

Slowly, she begins to smile. "It's alright, El, I'm fine."

He abandons her hand to get a better look at the damage. "Like hell you are."

Olivia goes quiet, letting him inspect the red skin of her middle and pointer fingers. But he doesn't need words, he knows where her mind has just gone. For over a decade, they'd operated as one, anticipating each other's movements and needs just like he'd done now, and it was humbling to feel this connection again. To feel it, still.

Eventually, she pulls back, shaking her head slightly, before asking him seriously, "Why do you think that about your mother?"

He shrugs, uncomfortable with the implication his mind keeps nudging at. Dementia. He doesn't want it to be true, but he doesn't want to keep his worries inside his chest either. "It's nothing big, God knows she's always been a bit…" he makes a face, giving her a bitter half-smile, "but she'd always known who we were, never had any trouble remembering anyone's names or nothin'."

"Is this about her calling me your partner?" she clocks him. "Elliot, it was probably a joke, I mean, I was your partner a lot longer than we've been—" She flushes, embarrassed. "Well, you know."

"Oh, I do know." The innuendo drips from his tone. Even in the middle of this unfortunate conversation, he still feels lighter looking at her blushing cheeks and wandering eyes. She'd always had a way of taking the edges off the horrors of the world without even trying. It's how he'd lasted so long at SVU to begin with. "But it wasn't the only time she mixed it up."

"Oh?"

Elliot inhales, then exhales sharply. "The first time I saw her since I've been back, she was distraught, barely recognized me with my undercover beard."

Olivia squeezes his hand comfortingly. "Well, you did look very rugged then."

Any other time, he would've been grateful for her attempt to lighten the conversation, but now that he'd started he could feel a knot forming in his throat and he just wanted it all out. "I'd been undercover with the Albanians for a while, and," he swallows, "everything was goin' in circles in my head, I was—"

"I know." She saves him the trouble, reminds him that with her, he didn't have to explain everything.

The relief alone is what allows him to finish. "She kept apologizing, said she was sorry she wasn't there for my beautiful bride's funeral."

"I'm so sorry she wasn't there, El," Olivia offers, cluelessly.

"She said your name," he blurts out, anxiously.

"Huh?"

He was hoping she'd read him because something about the words he needed to put together kept getting knotted up in his throat. But, as well as she knew him, she was often oblivious to her place in his life, so, naturally, she couldn't work this out and put him out of his misery.

"She said your name, Olivia," he began, taking in her puzzled look before continuing, "she literally asked 'how was Olivia's funeral?'" he finishes bitterly, hating the words for more than one reason.

He'd truly been lost then, too untethered to even begin to make sense of the connotations behind his mother's swap. How could he have let so much time go by without investigating his own mother's lapses? Between the horror prompted by the image of a dead Olivia, lying cold inside a casket, the shimmering relief when he reassured himself that it was not the case, and the subsequent guilt and sorrow when he remembered his reality, it had all simply been too much. So he'd made excuses, attributing the fluke to her — then irregular — meds and their weird side effects or something. But now he's—

"I," Liv interrupts his admonishing thoughts, and she does such a good job at disguising the tremble in her voice he might have missed it, if he hadn't spent over a decade memorizing her every mood, "I'm so sorry, Elliot."

Her instincts to comfort him are taking over now, as she brings her hands to wrap around his own, her brown eyes pools of grief for him. But he can feel the slightest shaking of her fingers before she tightens her hold, and her voice has a far away, breathy quality she uses when she's trying to hide that something affected her. "That must have been so hard for you," she says softly, bringing another hand to his cheek.

He closes his eyes, allowing himself to bask in the comfort she offers for the moment. It's nice to feel seen, to feel supported but not pitied. It had been hard then, and it was still hard now, for different reasons. He's still worried about mama, of course, but right now she's fine with Kathleen, probably eating at that Japanese restaurant he despises but they seem to love, and they're all healthy enough, happy enough. He's learned the hard way that loss has a way of creeping up on you when you least expect it, all you can do is hold on to the present while it's here. With Liv's soft hands warming his cheek, he feels strong enough to deal with whatever comes next.

"Olivia?" he whispers.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks." He opens his eyes then, all the more grateful that she's here, alive, with him. Elliot wants to calm her the same way she did him, so he takes her hand in his and asks, "What's up?"

"It's nothing, Elliot, I'm just…" She frowns, drawing back, and blows out all the air she'd been holding while he reaches for what he fears is now lukewarm tea. But it's alright, all he needed was a small diversion.

"Liv?"

"Hmm?"

"What part of what I said upset you?" He makes an effort not to look at her eyes, lest he scare her off.

She still draws her hands back. "It's really nothing."

"Liv," he admonishes her, knowingly.

She rolls her eyes at him, sighs, "Fine," then grumbles, "I hate how well you know me," before confessing, "I guess I just felt uncomfortable. Like I was overstepping somehow." She pauses, takes a break from his eyes while she picks at her nails, and he assumes that's as much as she can share, but then she takes a deep breath and faces him once more. "It's a familiar feeling, even after all this time, and I don't appreciate it."

Jesus, this isn't right. Olivia's his girlfriend — has been for months now — and she still feels like she's the odd one out amongst his loved ones. It makes bile rise in his throat, but he swallows it down.

"God Liv, how long will it take for you to get that you're my family, too?" he asks, frustrated, but then lowers his voice. "You've always been my family."

He sounds resigned, though, because as angry as this misconception makes him, he understands. He understands all too well just how hard it is to quit some patterns from long ago and she's right, they were partners for thirteen years while their relationship hasn't yet reached the one-year milestone. Because for all that time he spent trying to keep his family separate from work, trying to protect them from the evils he had to face every day, Olivia had been firmly standing on the work side of the fence, quietly watching over them as if they were her own. Not once had she dared to intrude upon the sanctity of his marriage, and now that he knows how seamlessly they come together, how perfectly in sync they are as partners in life, not just work, now it's suddenly obvious how much effort it must have taken for her to keep herself away. He'd had love, and kids, and a warm home full of joy, and it had been difficult to keep away once he realized how much she meant to him.

How hard must it have been for her, then, when all she'd had were the occasional dates and a lonely apartment?

All that, and Elliot isn't even allowing himself to ponder on the decade where they weren't anything at all.

So it's probably a tough habit to break, this compartmentalizing he knew they both still did, sometimes.

"Olivia, listen to me," he tells her, firmly. "I was—" He pauses, finding it difficult to say what's on his mind. "I was fucked up after that explosion took Kathy from me and I missed her so damn much. I felt like my world was upside down, and I was drowning in memories, suffocated with the weight of them."

Olivia nods, again, offering only comfort and warmth, even though her eyes are watering in front of his own.

"I know, El, you said it before."

"Yeah, in that fucking intervention," he curses, and Olivia gasps.

This is where his own habits get in the way, he's incapable of holding his tongue with her. Where with Kathy he'd usually try and measure his words, afraid of hurting her, with Olivia he has no filter. Years and years of being straight with her, of counting on her to be straight with him back because when you're on the job, it doesn't pay to get too worried about feelings. There's no time, no space for any of that shit.

So he sticks his foot in his mouth too often, and he fears it'll be the end of them, but there's no holding back once he gets started, he needs her to comprehend what he's trying to say.

"I was out of my mind with grief, Olivia, but it wasn't the only thing I was drowning in." He pulls her hands back onto his lap. "That night, when the car went off, it was supposed to be the worst night of my goddamned life, it was supposed to be a nightmare," he squeezes her hands, "but it wasn't. It couldn't be, because for a second there, when I saw your face in the rain, it felt like a dream."

"Elliot," she reprimands, wetly.

"No, you gotta listen, Liv, 'cause I gotta get this out," he says, selfishly. "I'd been dreaming I saw you again for years. I know I was the one who left, but, fuck, I missed you. I saw your face everywhere that first year, and then again when we moved to Italy."

Olivia swallows hard.

"I knew you weren't there, not really, but God, I wished—"

"I know," she interrupts him softly, her eyes telling him what her lips didn't dare to, me too.

"When I saw you there, I forgot for a second, you know?"

"Yeah," she answers, but her voice is barely even there.

"And then reality came rushing back and I just—"

"Okay," she soothes him, in that gentle voice she reserves for victims and children. "I understand it better now, why you kept pushing me away when I was trying to help you."

"Yeah," he breathes deeply, intertwining their fingers. "I felt guilty for leaving you and guilty for coming back, and I just didn't know how to deal with suddenly missing her after missing you for so long."

"Elliot, I—"

"When mama made that funeral comment," he sucks in a breath, "it was like opening Pandora's box on all those messed up feelings, but, God forgive me, I was relieved it wasn't actually you, not when I'd just gotten you back."

Olivia tries to pull out of his grasp, but he holds on tight.

"Elliot, stop," she whispers heatedly. "This isn't healthy, you shouldn't have to scrutinize your feelings for your wife to explain anything to me."

"I've come to terms with it, Olivia, I've—" Elliot's so embarrassed to be saying this, but she has to know. "I dealt with it in therapy."

Her almond eyes shimmer. "And did it help?"

"It did." He raises his eyebrows, still surprised it had an effect at all. "I guess it helped give me some perspective. I didn't know that she was gonna," he clenches his jaw, "gonna be murdered that night. It wasn't my choice to make."

"No," Olivia sighs, "it wasn't."

"And I'm allowed to be relieved that you're alive." He looks at her, memorizing every small freckle, every new crease, and loving them all. "I'll always miss Kathy, just like I've never stopped missing you. Doesn't mean I have to be sad all the time. Doesn't mean I don't deserve happiness, and I'm happy that I get to do this." He smiles, freeing one hand to bring her face closer to his. He means to peck her lips but is interrupted by a giggle.

"What's so funny?" his finger stroked her soft cheek.

"Nothing."

"Tell me," he insists, letting his thumb brush against her lower lip.

"I just think our therapists would be great friends," she whispers by his ear, giving him goosebumps.

"Oh yeah?" His fingers travel down her neck, then back up again.

"Uh-huh," she mutters, feeling him shiver.

"And why do you think that?" he asks absentmindedly, too focused on her soft sighs, her sweet smell, in the way she's turning her head to nuzzle his neck.

"El?" It comes as a puff of hot air against that sensitive spot on his neck and he reflexively brings up a hand to fist at the nape of her head. "You sure you wanna spend any more time discussing our therapists or—"

Elliot growls, angling her face so he can finally kiss her.

They might never work through their infinite baggage, but he can't find it in him to care. Not when her arms wrap around his neck, not when she pulls him ever closer, and definitely not when her tongue finds its way into his mouth.

A week and a half is too long.

Hell, twenty-four years is too damn long.

Everything else can hold for a while because he knows, when the time comes for them to face the outside world again, she'll have his back, and he'll have hers.