Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, blah blah blah, they all belong to Dick Wolf unfortunately.
Summary: Liv finally cracks and talks to Elliot about how she has been there for him from the moment she saw him again, after ten years, but he's never even once mentioned the stuff she went through while he was gone. Specifically, William Lewis. Language warning. One-Shot.
A/N: This is my first SVU fic so bear with me, guys.
….
What About Me?
….
Olivia was so very tired.
It was the eighth anniversary of her fateful day with William Lewis, when he tried to rape, torture, kill, and make her kill herself, and then tried to frame her for his death; and yet Olivia was stuck in her office late into the night thinking about her son and a nice glass of wine. She desperately wanted to go home, just to have an hour to herself to work through her emotions like Dr. Lindstrom taught her to, but she had paperwork that needed to get done and no time to waste.
She heard the last of her detectives leave just as she was starting her last dozen or so required signatures. She rubbed her eyes and opened her desk, pulling out her dusty, hidden bottle of wine and pouring herself a glass. She didn't really care if the cameras were watching.
She leaned back in her chair and sipped from her glass, staring at the last five pages that she needed to skim and sign. She knew she had to do it, but she couldn't find the will to deal with them right at that particular moment.
Olivia drained her glass and leaned forward to pour another one, pulling the paperwork toward her with a long sigh, when she heard a door bang shut and footsteps headed her way. She hoped it was just a detective who had forgotten their keys and not one of her friends, especially Fin, coming to ask her if she was alright. They knew as well as she did what day it was, and they had been delicately avoiding the subject for the entire shift.
She kept her head down and skimmed the paperwork, hoping she wouldn't be noticed, when she heard her office door creak open. She looked up to see the one person that she had been hoping to avoid for the whole day: Elliot Stabler.
She had been avoiding his texts all day, claiming to be too busy to have a conversation, and maybe she could get back to him tomorrow? Clearly that hadn't worked.
"Something you need, Elliot?" she pushed her glasses up her nose with a finger and signed the page she had been reading, not looking up at him.
"Liv, can we talk?" Elliot stepped forward and settled himself onto the loveseat against her office wall. She picked up another piece of paper.
"I told you I was busy today; I really need to get this paperwork done." She signed at the bottom of the page. Only four pages to go.
"I can wait." Elliot said simply, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
Olivia suppressed a sigh, deciding to take her sweet time with the paperwork in the hopes that he would leave. She read the papers word for word instead of skimming, pausing for as long as she could before she signed each one. She knew it hadn't escaped Elliot's notice that she only had a handful of pages left, but she was hoping he would leave anyway. He didn't.
After waiting as long as she reasonably could, she signed the last paper and set it aside. She took off her glasses and leaned back in her chair with her wine glass, sipping it and waiting for Elliot to say whatever it was he was here to talk about.
He didn't say anything for a long time, which wouldn't normally bother her, but today she was emotionally and physically exhausted, irritated, and just wanted to go home.
She finally snapped. "Spit it out, Elliot, I want to go home at some point today."
"What has gotten into you today, Liv? I've been worried because you've been blowing me off all day…"
"Has it ever crossed your mind that not everything in the world is about you?"
That shocked Elliot into silence, his eyes wide, which made Liv feel just a little bad about snapping at him.
"I'm sorry, Elliot, it's just been a rough day and I didn't feel like talking to anyone. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Something is bothering you, I can tell."
"After all this time, you still think that you can tell how I'm feeling just like that?" Live snapped her fingers, "You've been gone for ten years, a lot had changed."
"You haven't." Elliot said quickly.
Olivia scrubbed a hand down her face and drained the rest of her glass. "Elliot, I appreciate you coming here, I really do, but I don't want to talk about it."
"Liv, I'm just trying to be your friend…"
"My friend?!" Olivia interrupted, leaning forward over her desk. "Elliot, do you even know why I'm upset today? Do you know what happened?"
"You haven't said anything…"
"I shouldn't have to! If you were my friend, you would already know what happened, and you would have said something about it eight years ago!" Liv yelled. She felt years of pent-up rage and isolation building in her chest, and she was afraid that she was going to let it all loose on her friend. She wasn't sure she could stop herself.
"I don't even know what the hell that means…"
"Of course you don't, Elliot, because for ten years you were off living in your own little world in Italy while I was here, alone, being stalked and tortured by a maniac!"
Elliot sat in silence, his mouth hanging open slightly. Liv buried her face in her hands to hide her embarrassment about screaming at him about something that was out of his control.
"Liv, I didn't…"
"I figured you didn't know." Liv interrupted again, her voice muffled by her hands. She lowered them and tried to avoid looking at Elliot. "Look, I know you've been going through a lot, and I've tried to be there for you, but there's a lot of shit that happened to me while you were gone, and I had to go through it alone. Sure I had Fin, and Cragen, and Amanda, but none of them were you, Elliot, and I don't know how to let you back in when you didn't even have the decency to google me once in the last eight years."
Liv decided to pour herself another glass of wine to avoid looking at Elliot while he not-so-subtly pulled out his phone and started typing. She side-eyed him as his eyes skimmed over the article, going even wider.
"This…"
"Yeah, and that's not even nearly the whole story." Liv downed her whole glass in one go.
"Liv…"
"Do you want to read the police report, or is that enough detail to explain why this is a sore subject?" Liv spat, her anger rising again. She was so tired of this dance, of pretending that it didn't hurt more than anything that Elliot didn't even know about what happened with William Lewis, hadn't even heard about it. He had truly forgotten about her for the ten years that he was gone, and that was almost more than she could bear.
Elliot put his phone down. "Why don't you come over here and tell me about it?" he looked mildly uncomfortable, but sincere, patting the seat next to him.
"I really just…"
"What?" Elliot interrupted. "You want to go home, get drunk, and forget about it? You and I both know that's not a healthy way to deal with this stuff." Now he looked even more uncomfortable.
"What do you want out of this, Elliot? I wasn't just pretending to forgive you because of Kathy, and I'm already working toward letting go of my own guilt…"
"Look, I know I wasn't the best partner, or even the best friend in the past, but I've changed, Liv. This stuff still makes me a little uncomfortable, but I'm trying not to fuck things up this time. I care about you, let me help."
Liv eyed him skeptically, but she pulled out another dusty wine glass and poured two more glasses of wine. She moved around her desk and squished herself into the corner of her loveseat, as far away from Elliot as possible, and handed him the glass without looking at him. Elliot took the glass and then her hand before she could pull it away. He delicately sat their clasped hands on the cushion between them. She tried to pull away, but he held on even tighter.
"Liv… please trust me." He whispered.
She wasn't sure she could, but she told him everything anyway.
When she got to the last day, being strapped to the table, almost raped, and then forced to play Russian roulette, she had to stop in the middle of a sentence to choke back a sob.
Goddamn it, I'm the fucking Captain of the NYPD Special Victims Unit and I can't even hold it together to tell you about a crime that wasn't even in the top ten worst I've seen." She spat angrily, setting her glass on a side table and furiously wiping at her eyes with her free hand.
"Anyway, he shot himself, framed me, yadda yadda, you know the rest. So there." She picked up her glass and drained it.
"Liv…" Elliot had kept silent the whole time, letting her work through the story, and Olivia wasn't sure that she was ready to hear what he had to say.
"I really don't need your sympathy, Elliot, I…"
"You are so strong."
Olivia was stunned into silence.
"I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you when that happened. If I would have known…"
"You would have stayed in Italy and not done or said a damn thing, El, don't kid yourself."
"That's not true." Elliot squeezed her hand.
Liv finally turned to look at him and couldn't understand the look of determination on his face.
"If I had known what happened, I would have dropped everything and come back here for you, Liv. I'm serious." He sounded angry, but she didn't think it was at her.
"I think I might actually believe you." She whispered. She felt a rush of longing for what could have been, how things would have played out of Elliot had been there, how much she fucking wished that he had been there. She felt tears welling in her eyes and looked away.
"Liv, please," Elliot whispered. He scooted toward her, let go of her hand, wrapped his arm around her, and all of a sudden she was cushioned in his arms. She let go of everything that was holding her back and pressed her face into his chest, feeling truly safe for the first time in ten years. God, she had forgotten how safe he made her feel.
She felt Elliot press his nose into her hair and move his hands up and down her back and suddenly she couldn't hold it in anymore. She wrapped her arm around his stomach and sobbed into his chest for everything that happened to both of them, and all of the years that were lost between them. She cried for Kathy, for Noah, for everything that happened with Lewis, for the years that she had begged and pleaded and cried all alone for Elliot to please come back.
Elliot kissed her head and she cried even harder. She really hoped the cameras couldn't see her face.
When she was done, she finally felt the dampness against her cheek and her face flooded red. She was unbelievably embarrassed about the state she had left Elliot's shirt in.
"Elliot, Jesus, I'm so…"
"Please don't, Liv." Elliot's voice sounded distinctly rougher than usual. He pulled her back down into her arms and kissed the top of her head.
"God, I'm a grown woman…"
"Please, Liv." Elliot whispered into her hair.
So she laid her head on his shoulder, which was much more dignified than shoving her face into his chest, and let him hold her for a while longer. How could she deny herself, really, after ten years without him?
After a while, she happened to glance at the clock on her desk and noticed that it was well past two in the morning.
"Jesus, El, I have to be back to work in five hours, I have to go home and get some sleep."
Elliot let her go reluctantly, subtly wiping his eyes under the guise of grabbing her coat off the back of her chair. He helped her into it and they made their way to the parking lot in silence.
When they made it to their cars, which were conveniently parked next to each other, Liv looked at the ground sheepishly.
"Look, Elliot…"
"I won't tell anyone, Liv."
Olivia let go of the breath she had been holding since they had stepped outside. She touched his arm. "Thank you, El." She wasn't sure she was capable of saying anything else.
Elliot silently stepped forward and tucked her head into his shoulder, hugging her tightly. She let herself hug him back. She breathed in the scent of his cologne and laundry detergent, hoping to keep the memory for a long time.
"I'm so sorry about everything, Liv, but I promise, I promise, to be there for you from now on."
Olivia let out a long breath. "I believe you. Thank you." She let go and got into her car quickly, lest she look at him and break down again. But as she cruised out of the parking lot and onto a busy but not-as-busy-as-usual street, she noticed that for the first time in, well, ever, she wasn't left thinking:
What about me?
A/N: I tried to keep them in character, but like I said this is my first SVU fic and I'm still learning. I recently rewatched Return of the Prodigal Son and I needed to tell a story about how Liv has been there for Elliot since he got back but he hasn't really done a damn thing for her. This is a fix-it! Thank you so much for reading!
