6 - TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE

The text message had been casual, almost domestic. Meet me for lunch? So he had found her card. Olivia had said yes: she figured lunch was a good opportunity to see him and explain she would be harder to reach from that night onwards.

As if she owed this man any explanation about her whereabouts.

Strangely, she felt like she did, even though she knew better. This man was a perp, for crying out loud, and she had agreed to have lunch with him like he was a part of her life.

Well, he literally was. He was responsible for her existence, after all, and she told herself that was the only reason she felt this pull towards him.

Edward seemed incredibly tired when she found him already sitting at the diner booth, from which he waved at her to call her attention. His shoulders were slumped, and his weight seemed abandoned against the rest, his arm draped over it, his elbow invading the space of the empty booth behind theirs. His breathing was labored, like he had run a mile, but the only effort he seemed to have made was managing himself into that awkward sitting position.

"Hey there, Olivia," he said with some forced enthusiasm that didn't come through in his features.

"How are you feeling today?" she asked guardedly as she sat down.

"Like shit," he chuckled. "The day after is always the worst, I feel like I took a beating."

She knew that. Not only by the hollow look in his eyes, but also from all the research she had done on multiple myeloma: she had spent all morning online reading about the disease, its symptoms, the treatments, the side effects of the medication.

She told herself the reason for it was just curiosity.

She also told herself she had an agenda coming to this lunch, so she made an effort to stay impartial to his report on his health and got right down to business.

"Look, Edward…" she started. "I came here today because I want you to tell me what it is that you really want from me."

He straightened up on his bench as well as he could. "What do you mean?"

"I'm talking about your dramatic entrance. Coming to the station, claiming you had confessions to make, demanding to see me. Why? If you wanted to meet me, you could've just…contacted me."

Answers. That's what Olivia had come here for.

"I don't know…" he shrugged. "I guess I thought you wouldn't see me otherwise. Seriously, would you have given me the time of day if I'd just come to you and said…" He bent towards her and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Hey, I raped your mother?"

Olivia couldn't decide what hurt the most: the contents of the statement or the casual way he spoke it, like it was no big deal.

She took a deep breath and answered truthfully. "Maybe not."

"There you go," he said without looking at her as he lifted a finger to call the waitress' attention, and Olivia flashbacked to her own experience waiting tables the night before. He turned to her. "Are you ready to order?"

"You haven't answered my question." She crossed her arms and ignored his practical inquiry. "Why approach me at all?"

He turned to face her again, temporarily giving up on his endeavor. "I told you. I wanted to tell someone what I did. Also, I wanted to get to know my daughter before I died. Two birds, one stone."

The stone that kept hitting her was that word — daughter. It killed her every time.

Elliot welcomed the cold spray as it hit his face. He let the water envelop his body, focusing on the sensation as he tried to empty his mind. So much had changed in the last twenty-four hours.

He felt himself growing harder when Olivia unceremoniously entered his mind again. Even after spending the whole morning in bed with Dani, who had shown up unannounced again with breakfast and had actually proven to be an effective antidote to the blue balls from the previous night, it was still the thought of Olivia's lips and her body against his that caused his unrelenting erection. Even the cold water couldn't keep it down.

His eyes shut closed, and he was instantly back in the lounge, pulling her by the arm. You can't walk away from me like this. Her eyes growing wide, her scent, so close to him. His fingers still had her skin engraved on them, even as they slid up and down his length. He could still feel the softness of her lips against his, and he groaned when he imagined them wrapped around him, replacing his fingers' motions right now. He increased the speed, remembering what her tongue had felt like, the feel of her body pressed against his, the smell of her hair, of her skin when he had leaned into her neck and kissed it, her shuddering reaction.

He whispered curses as he came, harder than any of his standard-procedure orgasms with Dani.

She was still there when he got out of the bathroom. She had even made coffee, like she knew her way around his place and his stuff almost better than he did himself. The domesticity bothered him.

Dani laughed when she laid eyes on him. "Are you going undercover as a lumberjack?"

Elliot looked down at his flannel shirt and jeans. "I'm just supposed to dress casually," he said, reluctantly accepting the coffee mug she was offering and wondering what other concessions the act entailed.

He needed her gone. His and Olivia's undercover clothes were already packed in the trunk of their rental car, parked outside, and she was going to meet him so they could drive to the bar together.

And move in together.

He needed Dani gone. He didn't want Olivia to see her; he was ashamed. He chastised himself for even having let her in at all, for the way he had stupidly believed it would do anything to stop the impure thoughts that crowded his mind and riled up his body, well aware as he was that they were all directed at someone else.

"Well, as you know, I need to get ready," he said, sipping at her strong coffee to minimally mask the attempt to make her leave. "I'll go live somewhere else for the op, so I have to get going."

"Where?" she asked, eyebrows knitted like she didn't believe him.

His voice was a monotone as he volunteered the information he hoped she knew she had no specific right to. "Above the bar where I'll be working as a bartender."

"For your murder case?" She looked away and hid behind her mug: maybe she was imagining the worst details possible since he hadn't given her any — precisely because she couldn't handle them.

"Yep," he confirmed, but before he could say anything else, the doorbell rang.

Fuck. There was no way that wasn't Olivia.

Dani's eyes widened with incredulity. "You waiting for someone?" she asked.

"Yes," he turned to her on his way to the door. He had no other option at this point. "My partner."

The partner he had kissed and touched the night before, the one who had been in his thoughts, keeping him awake for most of the night. The partner that had starred in his dreams in the couple hours of sleep he'd gotten before Dani had knocked on his door with bagels and complaints about him not picking up his phone and leaving her to her own devices on a Friday night.

As an afterthought, he realized this casual thing with her wasn't casual enough for her to know that it wasn't going anywhere and that she was in no way entitled to Friday nights, or any other nights for that matter.

But it was Olivia's presence behind the closed door that was giving him gooseflesh, taking him back to the night before, and he was afraid for a moment that she would know when she saw him — that she would know she had refused to leave his mind even hours after she had evaded his touch.

His guilty hand wrapped around the doorknob, holding all the anticipation as he confirmed through the peephole that it was really her. His partner.

The partner he had just jerked off to in the shower.

He opened the door to reveal her. Olivia wore a long, black trench coat that probably hid Susie's outfit, of which only the long nails, black stockings, and high heels showed. She was also carrying a duffel bag that was supposed to contain her personal items.

"Hi," she said in a small voice through tight lips, also wearing an apprehensive expression that spoke volumes of uncertainty regarding their dynamic, but as Elliot had predicted, it soon changed to one of surprise with a hint of disgust as she moved past him and into the living room where Dani now stood, sporting her coffee mug like a trophy. Elliot thanked God she was dressed, but he knew the bare feet gave her away. "Oh, I didn't realize you had company."

It was kind of unbelievable to be standing in the same room as Olivia and Dani. To Elliot, it was as if one couldn't exist in the presence of the other.

"Ah…I don't…I just…" he blabbered.

"You don't?" Dani laughed. "What am I?" she pointed at Olivia. "Is this your partner?"

"Yes…" he confirmed, hissing for a while longer than necessary as both women narrowed eyes at each other. He found a point on the floor to fixate his stare and made the awkward introductions, his hand waving in the general direction of each of them in turn. "Olivia Benson, Dani Beck."

Olivia smiled with her head cocked to the side. "Oh, we've met."

Dani tilted her head to the opposite side with a puzzled expression and a smile of her own. "We did?"

"Don't you remember?" Olivia smiled caustically. "I came to the precinct looking for Captain Cragen. You were sitting at my desk."

Dani nodded slowly. "Oh, yeah, I remember. You looked a little different though. To be honest, I wasn't sure you were a cop. But I remember now. You came in looking for Elliot, but he wasn't there, so you went to the Captain's office. But I had no idea it was you, the famous Olivia people wouldn't shut up about. I thought if you came back, there would be a party or something when people saw you."

Olivia chuckled, letting a big smile linger on her face even though she was clearly not amused.

"Anyway, we need to get going," Elliot finally intervened, sending Dani a meaningful look.

'Oh, of course," she said, clearly pretending she hadn't yet realized that Olivia's arrival was her cue to leave, and disappeared into his bedroom. This couldn't get any worse.

Olivia set the duffel bag on the floor and kept her eyes there, her hands behind her back. She kept switching her weight between her feet.

"She um…" Elliot started. "She just showed up a while ago—"

"You don't need to explain anything to me, Elliot," Olivia said in one breath, looking up at him and raising a dismissive hand. "I'm not actually your wife, so…"

"Wife, huh?" Dani Beck said as she emerged from the bedroom, putting on her leather jacket, and Elliot registered her glare fixated on him with his peripheral vision while he watched Olivia biting a sly smile.

"It's a shame we never went undercover together, isn't it?" Dani approached him, clearly leaning in for a kiss, but he turned away and walked to the door, opening it for her and avoiding the glances of both women. She hesitated. "Give me a call when you can," she said, then turned her head around. "Bye, Olivia, it was nice meeting you—I mean, seeing you again."

Elliot couldn't close the door fast enough on the enduring wake of her departure.

It was a stab to her chest to see Dani Beck inside Elliot's apartment, her braid all messed up, barefoot, drinking coffee from his mug, going into his bedroom to retrieve her shoes and jacket. Olivia wondered just how much earlier she would have needed to arrive to find her completely naked, maybe wrapped up in a towel or sheet.

She had tried not to give much thought to what had happened between her and Elliot on their first night undercover, Edward and his disease serving as the perfect distraction. She believed she had done a pretty decent job at that. However, it had all reemerged inside her with a sour taste when she had seen that woman, clearly at home in his apartment, and realized that the physical contact they'd shared because of the operation had meant nothing to him — and should most certainly mean nothing to her either.

She was fairly certain she'd been able to keep her cool back at the apartment, but in the awkward silence of the car ride, her tongue was itching to say something.

He didn't have to explain anything to her. She knew that. Should she let the fact that he had tried carry any weight at all? Would that be considered a legitimate enough reason for her to ask for information? Maybe her disclaimer back there had helped rid him of any obligation.

Before she realized, though, she was hearing her own voice. "I didn't realize you were seeing her."

"I'm not," he replied instantly, triggering a nervous laugh from her.

"Come on, Elliot. It's been almost two months since she left the unit. Sorry to break it to ya, but you're seeing her, maybe you're even in a relationship with her."

"It's not a relationship, it's barely even a fling," he rushed to correct, but the admission in his words cut almost as deep as the sight of the woman in broad daylight.

"Whatever you say," she threw at him, injecting feigned nonchalance into her voice.

Nothing more was said on the matter. Silence set in as Olivia remembered she had to somehow get in the mood to go undercover tonight — with him. Maybe touch him. Maybe kiss him.

Knowing Dani Beck had been all over him just a few hours prior.

That had gotten out of hand. Elliot had never wanted things with Dani to go that far. She was supposed to be just a distraction, a pastime, some company when he felt lonely. He would certainly have preferred that Olivia didn't know about it.

She was acting like she was fine with it, but she was weird around him throughout their shift, distant. I didn't realize you were seeing her. She'd said that with a smile, and it had made him wonder just how bothered she was that he might be seeing someone. I'm not actually your wife. Maybe that had been nothing but the perfect excuse for her to clearly set their boundaries after the night before.

Either way, that was where they were, each retreating to their separate corner as they worked their shift, a clear line setting them apart from Susie and Rob.

Maybe that was for the best.

There were a lot more customers tonight, both the kind who just had a quick drink and broke a deal with him at the bar and the ones that sat alone at their tables all night with a drink, staring aimlessly at whatever sport was on the TV — there were even a few that occupied the pool tables, which had been completely forgotten the previous night.

Elliot had to watch Olivia serving them drinks in a very short skirt, sweet talking them to try and get some information that could help them with the case.

He couldn't help but wonder if part of her effort tonight wasn't an attempt to get back at him for Dani Beck. The few interactions they'd had were cold and dry, with barely any eye contact. Alvin Hobbes, who still had them under the microscope, watched one of those and approached him at the bar, pointing at the bottle of Jack. Elliot took it and poured him the drink.

"At the doghouse with the missus?" the boss asked.

"How'd you know?" Elliot chuckled, doing his best to act naturally.

"Oh I've been married once, I know what that's like. What did you do?"

"Who says I did anything?" Elliot feigned annoyance and innocence, the bad acting actually incredibly well-suited to the situation.

Hobbes grinned over his glass before taking a sip. "Just the way she's acting. She's pissed, my man."

Elliot huffed, running his hand over his short hair and adapting the truth as well as he could. "She saw me talking to an ex."

With a thud of his glass against the counter, Hobbes asked for a refill. "Whew, an ex? You're in deep shit. Something to it?"

"No!" Elliot said with conviction. "I swear! She won't believe me."

Hobbes emptied his tumbler again and set it down, standing up from his stool. "You go over there and show her she's the one you want. Or at least do a very good job acting like she is. Otherwise you'll be sleeping downstairs on your first night living here."

Elliot nodded slowly. "You know what, that's exactly what I'm gonna do," he said. "I'll be right back."

It turned out that there was something to his undercover boss' advice. Words were not Elliot's forte, but actions spoke way louder, and he realized he didn't want Olivia to get the wrong idea about Dani, for whatever reason.

Screw their boundaries.

He watched her coming back from a table with two empty beer bottles that she discarded, and when she distractedly started to make her way towards the bar, he intercepted her, sneaking her into a secluded corner.

"What are you—" she started to say, but Elliot pinned her against the wall and leaned in to kiss her, not giving her a chance to refuse or escape.

He rejoiced in the sweetness of her mouth: it was the taste he'd been craving all day. He parted her lips with his own rather roughly, demanding entrance, which she granted. She released a soft moan as she gave him access, and after the initial shock, she slid her hands up his chest, wrapping both arms around his neck and willingly kissing him back now.

Elliot slipped a hand under her shirt, gripping at the skin of her waist, his fingertips reaching for the clasp of her bra but not undoing it, just playing with it. He wanted to speak to her, but he didn't want to break the kiss.

It was way too good.

A moment later, he unlatched his mouth from hers, kissing his way across her cheek to her ear. "Hobbes noticed you're mad at me."

"So that's why you're doing this," she breathed, the disappointment clear as day, but Elliot paid more attention to the fact that she didn't try to deny it.

"Sort of," he said against her neck between bites. At each one, she gripped harder at his nape with one hand, the other snaking down his back, pulling him to her.

It seemed like Susie had already forgiven her husband.

Elliot pulled back a little to look at her; she was undeniably waiting for an addendum to his answer. "He said to come tell you the other girl doesn't mean anything to me." Before Olivia could react in any way, Elliot closed the distance and seized her lips once again for a few more seconds, just to break contact entirely the next moment. "She doesn't. She never did."

The bar stayed open late, until almost three in the morning. When Elliot and Olivia were already placing the chairs on top of the tables, Hobbes approached them and congratulated them on their second night of work.

"You both seem like you're quite at home already," he said. "The customers seem to like you as well. Now go upstairs and get some rest."

They didn't need to be asked twice.

The upstairs apartment, originally their crime scene, was now a mess of boxes and suitcases. The NYPD had arranged everything so it would look like they were really moving in, with a u-haul full of boxes containing books, records, plates, silverware, and the basic things that furnished a house, which they'd towed in with their rental.

While Olivia showered, Elliot found the linen box, and he made the bed with the best-smelling sheets he could find.

Of course it was only one bed. They were supposed to be married.

There wasn't even a couch; it was just a big room, big enough to fit a bed, a wardrobe, a bathroom, and a kitchen of sorts, with a sink, stove and fridge that faced the bed. A TV hung from the ceiling, but when Elliot tested the remote, it did not work, which probably meant the batteries needed to be replaced.

Olivia came out of the bathroom wearing a tank top and sweatpants, visibly very tired and brushing her teeth. "You found sheets," she said, eyes on the bed, trying not to worry too much about the fact that they were about to share it.

Elliot hadn't even dared sit on the bed yet, not without her permission. "You can take the bed, obviously," he said. "I found a comforter that I can spread out on the floor and—"

"Absolutely not," she countered, then disappeared into the bathroom again. As she washed her mouth, she gathered courage to pretend that sharing a bed didn't mean a thing before going back out there and meeting his uncertain stare. "We're undercover as a married couple; we have to sleep in the same bed. I think we can handle that."

Her tone was coy, but Elliot wished she would speak for herself on that matter. Well, he knew even that would be a lie — at least from the way she had responded to his touch downstairs.

Neither of them could handle it.

But he shrugged and agreed, almost challengingly. "Okay."

Olivia had expected him to fight her harder on it, but maybe he really didn't feel like it was a big deal to lie in bed next to her, maybe not nearly as big of a deal as lying in bed next to Dani. Maybe he would think of her while Olivia filled her place, trying to reconcile the fact that she was the intruder now, the replacement.

She doesn't mean anything to me, he'd said, contrary to her mind's torturing thoughts. She never did. Olivia's brain had no comeback for the way he'd kissed her to prove his point, but it could still claim he'd only done it for Hobbes' benefit.

He took off his flannel shirt, revealing a grey t-shirt underneath that he decided to keep on. He took a pair of sweatpants with him to the bathroom, adhering to her dress code, while she took her side on the bed before she could respond to her instinct to run the hell away from there.

A few minutes later, he came back out and found the lights off but for the nightstand lamp and Olivia lying in bed, facing up as though looking at something very interesting on the ceiling.

She tried to act like she wasn't aware of him getting closer and closer until they were under the same sheet. He didn't buy it.

The smell of Olivia's shampoo coming from her damp hair was overwhelming when he leveled his head with hers on top of his own pillow. He wanted to roll towards her and dip his nose into the strands, fall asleep surrounded by her locks.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked instead.

Us, lying in bed like this, she thought, but her alibi emerged with very little effort. "Edward," she responded flat-out. "I had lunch with him today."

"What?" Elliot rasped, unable to keep his voice from raising a little. "Are you forgetting—"

"I'm not forgetting anything," she cut him off, waving her hands and turning her head towards his, their eyes meeting, the intimacy of their horizontal argument giving her chills. "I just used the opportunity to tell him I wasn't going to see him anymore, that I was going undercover for a case and that I was done with him."

He shook his head. "You don't owe him any explanation, and you certainly did not have to do it in person."

"Elliot…" her voice softened, solemnly ignoring his reproachful tone. She recalled Edward's breathlessness, the pain in his expression. "Each day he looks worse, seems weaker."

"Good," he gloated.

It was her turn to raise her voice a little, still careful not to be overheard in case Hobbes hadn't left yet. "Can you shut up for a second? I was reading about his disease. It's supposed to be very aggressive. And so is the chemo. People with multiple myeloma rarely live longer than five years."

Elliot let out a long sigh. "He said from the beginning that he was dying. And why does that matter anyway?"

"I went to see him today because I wanted to know why he came to me. Or do you really think he just wanted to confess his sins? He could have gone to a priest for that."

Elliot didn't want to encourage the subject of Edward or anything related to him, but he figured it was a good thing she was trying to share it with him. "What did he say?"

Her voice was firm when she responded. "He said he wanted to get to know me. You know, before dying."

"And you believed him?" Elliot jabbed quickly.

Her eyes were pleading with him while she still maintained control of her voice. "Well, why would he lie?" Her question to him held more meaning than the words she spoke, but she knew he wouldn't lie to her if he had a good enough reason to doubt her father's motives.

He was silent for a moment, debating whether he should poke holes into the story she'd bought so easily, but he just couldn't live with the possibility that she was fooling herself.

"Liv…" his tone softened. "When you read about his disease and the treatment…was there anything else besides chemo that could treat the condition he has?"

She turned away, her focus turned upwards once again, his eyes suddenly too much to handle. She regretted telling him. "What do you mean?"

It dawned on her before he spoke, but she waited anyway, holding her breath.

"You know, something that a family member might help with." She was silent for several seconds, her eyes moving as if she were reading something written on the ceiling. "Liv?"

When she spoke next, her voice was just a whisper. "I'm such an idiot."

Elliot propped himself up on one elbow for a moment. "Why? What are you talking about?"

"Bone marrow transplant," she said, and he could hear the tears she was fighting. "A bone marrow transplant is one of the possible treatments for multiple myeloma. That's what he wants from me."

Elliot sighed and, on some level, regretted helping her get to that conclusion. He reached for her, sliding his arm under her neck and pulling her with a hand wrapped around her shoulder.

"What are you doing?" she said, taken by surprise, crossing her arms in front of her chest as a barrier against the unexpected contact.

"Just come here," he said, pulling her to him, and she did not fight him any longer, letting herself roll over to him and rest on his chest, an arm draped over it. "It's alright."

She sighed, letting the feel of him against her cheek obliterate any thoughts of where Dani Beck had or had not been earlier. Right now, Olivia felt entitled to his body somehow, and she used it to maintain her grip on her sanity. "How did I not see this?" she whispered.

"It's gonna be okay," Elliot assured her. "Let's just go to sleep, we're both exhausted."

Olivia wanted to stay awake and punish herself with incessant thoughts, but Elliot's warmth seemed to silence the voices. She wasn't strong enough to fight the comfort he provided or the sleep that soon enveloped her.