A/N: I still don't know what I'm doing here. Parallel universe anyone?
Again, I make no promises about how long I'm going to continue this. I have less than zero plan for any of it. However, I'm already toying with the idea of a "parallel universe" multi-chap fic with a little more of a plan. But again, these ongoing stories scare me, so I don't know if that will actually happen.
Disclaimer: You're going to recognize some dialogue. That doesn't mean I own it.
Elliot rubbed his eyes, trying to brush the sleep out of them as he exited the sedan in front of his partner's apartment. He'd never been here before, but it hadn't been hard to get her address. He'd told Cragan he didn't like what their perp Richard White had been up to and wanted to keep an eye on things, and Cragan agreed by sharing her home address.
That's how Elliot found himself riding the elevator to the fourth floor and scanning the door tags for the name "Messer." He found the right place at the end of the hall and knocked three times. He heard some commotion behind the door but no answer. He waited a few seconds and tried again but still no answer. So he waited a few seconds more but was getting worried. He was just about to knock again when someone opened the door.
Elliot recognized the man enough from the pictures on her desk. This was her husband, Mark. He was roughly Elliot's height, maybe a bit shorter. He had sandy hair and brown eyes like Olivia's though not quite as inviting. He had the starting of a receding hairline and potbelly that screamed "desk job" to Elliot.
"Can I help you?" Mark asked, a bit irritated.
"Hi I'm Elliot Stabler," he said, sticking out his hand to shake. "Olivia's partner at SVU."
"Oh," Mark said, shaking his hand. "Nice to finally meet you. I'm Mark Messer. We're uh, kinda rushed for time. I need to get Chelsea to school and Olivia needs to get to the precinct, is there something we can do for you?"
Elliot quickly realized he wasn't going to be invited into the apartment, so he sidestepped Mark and entered the living room.
"Actually, I thought I'd give Olivia a ride today. You know, I was in the neighborhood," he explained.
Just then, a little brown-haired fireball ran past him and into the kitchen.
"I'm NOT wearing those tights to school," Chelsea pouted from behind the island. "They're sweaty and they make me itch."
"Chelsea Serena Messer, if you don't come back here and put these tights on this instant I swear," Olivia stopped mid-sentence when she reached the living room and saw what she'd been missing while trying to get her daughter dressed for school.
"We have company," Mark said, shifting his eyes from Olivia to Elliot.
"El, what are you doing here?" she asked.
"I was in the neighborhood," he said. "Thought I'd drive you to work."
"Do you have the sedan with you?" she asked, folding her arms, Chelsea's tights still clutched in her fist.
"Yep," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"Which means you drove all the way uptown from the Queensboro Bridge, dropped off the car, picked up the sedan, turned around all the way back downtown to get here," she said dryly. "That's a lot of neighborhood my friend."
"Stop acting like a cop," Elliot said with a laugh.
"Livvy I really need Chelsea to get ready," Mark interrupted. "I'm already going to be late for work."
Olivia looked tired and a little distraught.
"We can drop her off," Elliot said. "What, school's probably 10, 15 minutes away? We can do it before work."
"You want to take her to school in the back of a cop car?" Mark balked.
"It's not a cruiser, Mark," Olivia said. "There aren't bars on the back windows. It's a regular car. Her booster seat will fit."
Mark checked his watch again.
"Fine fine," Mark said, grabbing his briefcase off the coffee table. He pecked Olivia on the cheek and waved to Chelsea as he left, then he was out the door, not even bothering to say goodbye to Elliot.
"Is he always that high strung?" Elliot asked.
"He likes routine," Olivia said. "He takes Chelsea to school everyday and our neighbor Mrs. Cooper picks her up. He just likes to stay on time."
"He must love when you get called in on cases in the middle of the night," Elliot said.
Olivia didn't answer so he took that as a yes.
"What time does she have to be at school?" Elliot asked.
"Not for another hour," Olivia said. "But with both of us having such early mornings, she goes to the morning daycare program at school."
Elliot felt a pang in his chest. At home, Kathy drives all the kids to school. She gets up and packs their lunches and makes breakfast. And she picks them up every day too. He wished Chelsea could have something like that too.
"Chelsea, can you come out here please," Olivia said, calling her daughter out of the kitchen. She came in with her head hung, wringing her hands.
"Baby, please tell me why you don't want to wear the tights," Olivia said, sitting down on the floor so she was eye level with Chelsea.
"They make me really hot, Mommy," she said. "I sit by the heater, and when it comes on my feet start to sweat and itch, and I can't think about anything else."
"But honey, if you want to wear this nice dress, you have to wear something underneath it," Olivia said.
"Please don't make me Mommy," Chelsea said, little tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
Elliot knew it wasn't his place, but he stepped in anyway.
"Hey, Chelsea," he said and both girls turned to look at him. "My daughter Kathleen, remember I told you about her? She doesn't like wearing tights either. Do you know what she does instead? Do you have shorts you wear to gym class or dance class that you can wear under your dress instead of tights."
"Mommy, could I wear my dance spandex instead?" she asked, smiling.
"I think so honey," Olivia said, getting to her feet. "Why don't you go find a pair and then get your shoes and backpack so we can get going."
Chelsea ran over and hugged Elliot around the knees and he instinctively cupped his hand around the back of her head in response.
"Thanks for the idea Elliot," she said before running off down the hall. His heart melted just a little bit more. He hadn't known Chelsea for very long, but he loved her from that first day he realized who she was. And try as he might not to care about Olivia, she was capturing his heart too. But he couldn't tell if it was because they were partners, or she was the mother of his child, or simply just because of who she was.
Once Chelsea was out of earshot, Liv walked to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of orange juice.
"Why are you really here?" she asked. "Last night Munch offered to drive me home."
"That doesn't sound like him," Elliot said.
"We don't know that White's after me," she said. "He could have left town."
"Well, I'd rather not take that chance," Elliot said. "For either of you."
They didn't get to say anything else because Chelsea trotted back out with shoes and socks on, no tights, her raincoat and her backpack.
"I'm ready!" she exclaimed and skidded to a halt in front of Elliot.
"Looks like a new record there, kid," Olivia said, putting a yogurt in Chelsea's lunch box and zipping it up.
"Are the Messer girls ready to roll?" Elliot asked.
"We are," Olivia said, grabbing her keys and her blazer from the kitchen table.
Elliot absentmindedly picked up her orange juice glass and downed the rest of it. She cocked an eyebrow at him but didn't say anything.
"I'm going to walk her inside today," Olivia said, unbuckling her seatbelt when they got to the school. "Just in case."
"I'll come too," Elliot said, putting the car in park at the curb.
"That's not necessary," she mumbled.
"Just wanna make sure the school is safe, Liv," he said.
He'd been doing this more often lately, wanting to check on or know more about the things in Chelsea's life. He knew it bothered Olivia but he couldn't help himself. He wanted to know everything about the little girl, and know that she was safe no matter where she was.
They hadn't really discussed things further. She absolutely refused to do it on the clock and they hadn't really spent any time together just the two of them outside of work. But Elliot would ask about Chelsea whenever he saw an opportunity. Olivia seemed to let that slide at work, and she'd always volly back questions about his kids, her daughter's half siblings that she knew nothing about.
Olivia didn't argue as they all excited the cruiser and he followed them into the school.
"Detective Messer," the receptionist said. "So good to see you."
"Hi Anne," Olivia said. "We're just dropping off Chelsea and then we're on our way to work."
"Elliot Stabler, her partner," he said, clearing things up.
"Where's Mark this morning?" Anne asked. "Everything okay?"
"Absolutely," Olivia said, lightly brushing back Chelsea's curls with her fingers. "We just got a late start and he needed to be in the office early. Do you mind if we walk her down. I just want to tell Mrs. King something."
"Sure thing," Anne said, buzzing them into the building.
Elliot followed his girls… the girls… down the hall. They held hands and giggled before stopping in front of a classroom. Crayon and construction paper pictures hung on the wall outside, and the noise from inside the room was about three decibels louder than appealing before 8 a.m.
"Detective Messer," the teacher said. "What a treat to see you dropping Chelsea off today."
Olivia smiled at her before leaning down and kissing her daughter.
"Have a good day at school, baby," she said. "Remember, Mrs. Cooper will come get you like always and tonight we'll have tacos for dinner."
"Yay, tacos!" Chelsea cheered. "Bye Mommy, I love you. Bye Elliot."
Olivia said "I love you" at the same time he said "Bye Sweetheart." She glared at him but didn't say anything else.
"What brings you into the building today?" Mrs. King asked Olivia. "And who's this?"
"Mrs. King, this is Elliot Stabler, my work partner," she said, and Elliot shook the teacher's hand. "I brought her today because we wanted to just give the administration a little head's up about a case we're involved in at work. There's a man named Richard White who may be following me at the moment, I just want to make sure the school's aware in case he would try to come near the property."
"Oh my," Mrs. King said. "Do you have a picture so we know who to look out for on the playground and such?"
"We can email an image to the school once we get to the precinct this morning," Elliot said.
"Well thank you for letting me know," Mrs. King said. "And you'll tell Principal Carter and Anne?"
"Yes," Olivia said. "We're going to tell them on the way out, but I wanted you to know too."
"I'll keep an eye out," Mrs. King said. "And detective, please stay safe."
"This one won't even let me drive to work by myself," Olivia said, thrusting her thumb in Elliot's direction. "I'll be fine."
As they walked away from the classroom they both heard a little kid go "Who's that?"
Then they heard Chelsea say "That's my Mommy, she's a police officer."
Then the same kid said, "Who's the guy?"
And Chelsea said "That's Elliot, he's really cool."
And Elliot couldn't help but smile all the way down the hall.
"You keep your face that way and it'll freeze like that," Olivia said, but she was smiling too.
"The price of being cool, Liv, that's just the price of being cool," he said.
They told the principal and the receptionist about White, promised to email over a photo, and then got back to the sedan. They were stuck in traffic trying to get back to the precinct and Elliot thought now might be a good time to talk about the elephant in the room.
"Liv," he started. "Are we ever going to talk about that night?"
"We're on the clock, El," she said.
"We're always on the clock," he said. "It's not like we hang out outside of work. If we're going to be partners, we have to trust each other. And call me crazy, but getting a bombshell like all this would be enough to give anyone some trust issues."
"We've got a pretty good thing going here, considering," she said. "Bringing up the past is just going to open old wounds."
"Mine never closed, Liv," he said. "I just need to know why you didn't at least try to find me. Tell me about her. I mean, if you'd never transferred to SVU I'd still never know."
"That was the point," she said with a bitter laugh.
"A kid has a right to know her father," Elliot said.
"Yeah, well I never did," she sniped back at him.
"I'm sorry," Elliot said. "I didn't know."
"Do you know why I joined SVU?" she asked.
"The great coffee and stellar company?" he joked.
"When my mother was in college, she worked in the dining hall at Columbia to pay her way through school," Olivia started. "One night, when she was leaving work, a man pushed her into an alley and raped her. And I'm the product of that rape."
He let the words sink in, gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.
"Liv, I didn't know," he said.
"Nobody on the squad does," she said. "Except maybe Cragan because they asked me why I wanted to join SVU on my application. It's not something I talk about. The only people who are still in my life that even know about it are Mark and my mother. And now you."
For some reason, Elliot felt proud that she shared it with him.
"Blood relations don't mean as much as you think, El," she said. "There are a lot of ways to make a family."
"But blood is one of them," he said. "And she's mine."
"Do you really want your wife to know about her?" Olivia said. "About me, about us? As far as she knows, I'm your married partner who you never met until a few months ago. Right? That doesn't have to change. To Mark, you're just a guy he met this morning."
"I care about her, Liv," he said. "Chelsea. I care about her. Just like I care about my other four. I can't just turn that off."
"Nobody says you have to turn it off," Olivia said. "I care about your four kids too. It's why we do what we do. To protect them. To make the world safer for them."
"I just want to be a part of her life," Elliot said.
"And you can be," Olivia said. "I don't know about you, but I'm in SVU and this partnership for the long haul. You'll see her from time to time. Hear about her growing up. But you can't be her father. She already has one of those."
"Then who am I supposed to be?" he said. "I've already missed so much."
"Just be Elliot," she said. "You're 'cool,' remember. Can't that be enough for now?"
It wasn't. It wasn't good enough for Elliot because if someday Chelsea found out the truth, and found out they kept it from her for so long, he don't know if he could take it. But Liv is her mother, and God help him, Mark is the only father she's ever known. He had to accept it.
"Fine, I can be Elliot," he said. "I've been doing that for over 30 years, it's gotta come natural."
Then she snickered, the same way she did that first night and it warmed his heart.
"Can I make one more request though?" he asked.
"Depends on what it is," she said.
"Over time, will you at least tell me about her. About your life?" he asked. "I'd like to know what your pregnancy was like, what she was like as a baby. I just don't like knowing who she is but not knowing her at all."
Olivia was silent for a few minutes, fiddling with her wedding ring.
"I don't open up very easily, El," she said. "My life, our lives, haven't always been white picket fences and Happy Days reruns. But maybe, over time, I'll feel more like sharing."
"Well," Elliot said. "If you're in this for the long haul, I'm sure there are plenty of stakeouts in our future."
Traffic started moving, and just like the jam, Elliot thought maybe he was finally breaking down some of the wall that was up between him and Olivia.
