Prompt #6: "What do you think about couples costumes?"
Strange New Things
~oOo~
Olivia already invited him to the party, but she's nervous about suggesting the costume idea. They've been talking more, spending more time together, but they're still them and so they haven't directly addressed what they are to each other or where things are heading. She doesn't know if it's too much, if he'll read something into it. She waits, hoping he'll bring it up and that she'll have the courage to go through with it. She thinks they could win.
Luckily, when they're on the way out to dinner one night a few weeks before Halloween, he asks, "You have any idea on a costume yet?"
She decides to ease him into it. "Well…what do you think about a couples costume?"
His eyes widen in surprise for a second and then he smirks at her. "I'm ok with the idea of them but my general costume rules apply: I'll go as a character but not an object. So no ketchup & mustard..."
She laughs. "No salt and pepper shakers…"
He's laughing, too. "Exactly!"
"Okay, well, there's a contest. For best couples costume. And I had an idea. Any chance you watch Stranger Things?"
"I do actually. Eli got me into it."
"It's one of the only shows I'm caught up on. And I know a lot of people are really into Jopper…"
"Jopper?"
"Joyce and Hopper."
"Oh!"
"And his shaved head this season…I thought that might work for you."
"I see, had to find a bald guy."
"A hot bald guy."
He snorts and she knows she's surprised him with her boldness — it feels good, makes her want to do it again.
~oOo~
She finds a puffer coat that's the right colors on Poshmark, and she borrows a beanie from Rollins, who of course doesn't let her leave it at "Halloween costume."
"Since when do you dress up?"
She thinks maybe she'll get away with a partial truth. "I'm going to a party a Mom of one of Noah's friends is having. I never go and it hasn't gone unnoticed. I don't want him to start getting left out of things because of it."
"Mmm, makes sense. And are you bringing anyone with you?"
She should've known she couldn't fool one of her detectives, all of whom have surely taken note of Elliot's increasingly frequent appearances at the precinct. "Um. Elliot agreed to come with me, so I don't have to go alone."
"And is he dressing up?"
"...Yes."
"It's a couples costume, isn't it? So this is getting serious then?"
Olivia just takes the beanie from her and rolls her eyes.
~oOo~
Elliot joins her and Noah for pizza and a movie the week of the party. It's not quite Halloween, but she greets him at the door with a Snickers from the witch's cauldron on the entry table.
"Don't I get to choose my own from the bowl?" he jokes and she throws back, "Like I don't know what you'll pick?"
"Fair enough", he says, pocketing the candy bar. She notices he has a little facial hair. "I'm growing it back a bit. For the costume."
"Yeah? Good", she says.
"Really?", he suddenly wants to know. "You like it?"
"On you, yeah" she replies, and she doesn't know where this honesty has suddenly come from with them but she can't get enough of it.
"Well, then. Maybe I'll keep it," He adds, "for you" with the look he gives her.
Noah leads him off to check out his glow-in-the-dark skeleton costume and she suddenly thinks back to the first Halloween after Elliot put in his papers, when Calvin and his grandparents came for a visit and they briefly went to a Halloween festival before she (of course) got called into work. She has to remember to tell Elliot how well Calvin is doing. She went to his high school graduation a few years ago and he'd gotten a scholarship to college. The dichotomy strikes her again—she and Elliot still know all of each other's preferences and mannerisms, can still predict what the other will do next on a case, still automatically sync up their steps. But there is so much they haven't caught up on from that missing ten years. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. But Calvin, that's something he'd like to know, something positive. It's one piece of the puzzle that she reassures herself they'll fill in over time.
~oOo~
In the car on the way to the party he tells her suddenly, "I would fight monsters for you like that, you know." He says it lightheartedly, clearly picturing a Demogorgon, but she briefly flashes to the very different brand of monster she encountered while he was gone and how he wasn't there to fight for her, fight with her. Still, she knows he means it and knows it's true (knowing it was part of what gave her the strength to defeat the monster herself, in the end), so she lets it take her back instead to his long-ago elevator declaration.
"I'd give you a kidney." She takes his hand, rubs his knuckles with her thumb. This has become their thing in the car. They touch a lot like this now and she thinks that although the sexual tension is sure as hell still there, these touches aren't even about that. She thinks they just both like to reassure themselves that the other is actually here next to them.
~oOo~
She thinks they have a decent shot at winning, doing a quick scan of the other costumes on the way in. There's Morticia and Gomez Addams, a magician and rabbit, a hot dog and bun (she sees Elliot notice those two too, and he shakes his head like, no way in hell). Soon they're standing awkwardly in a group, neither of them all that into parties, especially with people they don't know, when one of the parents exclaims loudly, "I bet you two would win if you just recreated that church kiss, right now!"
Elliot laughs and shakes his head and Olivia wants to run out the front door. She had introduced him as her friend, and okay, maybe people would still assume, but they aren't and now he's probably horrified. He must feel her anxiety because he suddenly puts a hand on her back and leans down to her ear to say, "let's go get some air".
There's a back door propped open leading out of the kitchen to a stairwell. They walk out and she heads all the way down the stairs, not sure where she's planning to go. She leans against the railing standing on the last stair and he leans against the opposite side. He looks at her and suddenly reaches for her wine glass, puts it and his beer on one of the other stairs. He takes her hands. She's suddenly nervous.
"I want to, you know," he says. She arches a brow at him, not sure what he means. "I just didn't want to do it in front of all those people", he adds, and before she can react, he is pressing his body against her, pushing hers against the railing behind her and he is kissing her, Elliot is kissing her and he must have STUDIED that church scene because he is nailing it, she has never been kissed like this and she's waited so long for this, waited so long for it to be with him, and she kisses him back and tries to tell him that with her lips and her tongue and now that she thinks of it maybe this is how they'll tell each other what they need to because God knows they've never been good at the talking but this? Apparently this they can do. They are out of breath and who knows if this railing is secure but it doesn't matter, the whole party could come out on the back stoop and watch and they wouldn't even notice. He was gone for ten years and she suddenly thinks she wants ten years of this at least, wants more, wants all the years they have left and she thinks they deserve them, doesn't care if that's fair or rational or if it's ridiculous.
~oOo~
"So— did you win?" Rollins asks at work on Monday.
"I have no idea", Olivia answers honestly.
They never went back in to the party.
Note: The author of this SVU: Fall in Love story will be revealed in November
