Title: Perspectives

Rating: Everyone. Nothing questionable. The smut portions of the 'Elliot' and 'Olivia' chapters will be posted under the title 'Mature Perspectives'. See author's notes.

Pairing: Elliot/Olivia romance

Disclaimer: Standard. I don't own, you don't sue, thanks!

Notes: This is a continuation of the 'Story Of My Life' series. It starts with 'Story of My Life', continues with 'Memories', then next is 'If That's What It Takes' and then this one, 'Perspectives' / 'Mature Perspectives (which is the smut version of the last two chapters of this story.) Although all the stories could be read as stand-alones, there are references to previous stories, so reading them all is recommended but not entirely necessary.

'Perspectives' is written entirely in first person (A first for me, I usually don't) but since so many people would be affected by Elliot and Olivia getting together, it made sense to write it in first-P. There are as of now eight chapters: 'Don', 'John', 'Fin', 'Casey', 'George', 'Family' (Kathy, Maureen, and Kat, and a short section from Lizzie and Dickie's POV's) 'Elliot' and 'Olivia' and I'm tossing around the idea of having a chapter on 'Alex', her POV. Unfortunately that chapter is still on the planning table; I haven't written that out yet because I still don't know how she got out of Witness Protection and got back to New York for 'Conviction'. I'm trying to cover, in depth, everyone who might be affected, either professionally or personally, by the pairing; if you can think of anyone I've missed in the above listing, please drop me a note and tell me so. The reason I'm writing this is because a lot of fanfic authors out there are tossing them together without regard fro consequences; and life, as we all know, doesn't work like that. Every action has consequences; everything has a price. The price for Olivia's and Elliot's happiness with each other is their separation, but that will turn out to be a mixed blessing.

So enjoy reading, and while I won't beg for reviews, if you think my reasoning for anything was incorrect, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!---Jaenelle Angelline

Perspectives: Don

I was upset with them for coming in late.

I remember that was the first thing I thought when I saw the two of them come in together, side by side. It wasn't unusual for them to come in together; Elliot would stop and pick up Olivia on his way into work if he happened to be in the neighborhood…and since he gave the house to Kathy and the kids and Liv helped him find an apartment in the precinct's vicinity, he was always in the neighborhood now. Part of me was relieved when that happened; I worried about her walking to work by herself on the days when one of the guys didn't give her a ride, I worried about her walking home by herself at night when anything could happen. Yes, she's a trained cop. Yes, she can take care of herself.

It didn't stop me from worrying.

But when Elliot moved into her neighborhood there also went my indicator of whether anything was happening or not. And when I use the word 'happening' I mean between the two of them. What they had was a great partnership; it always has been. What made it different was that after Kathy left, and even a little bit before, I could see the way she looked at him, and I knew that what she felt for him was a bit more than she should be feeling for her partner and a married man. And then Kathy left, and I was so sure they were going to break the rules. I even started keeping an eye on the IAB rats I knew about, hoping none of them saw my two detectives and made the connection. Because, as their captain, I was honor-bound to split them up…but as their friend and as Olivia's surrogate father, I didn't have the heart to do that.

I was completely surprised then to find out that instead of going to Olivia for comfort after that difficult case with his former partner's son, he'd gone to Olivia's friend, Dr. Hendrix. I saw them together at a bar one night when I stopped on my way home to talk to Fin and John about a case; Elliot was sitting there with the good doctor as if no one else existed in the world, and there was my girl sitting with Fin and John and putting up a convincing show of not being bothered that he, who used to come and talk to her about everything, suddenly wasn't talking to her anymore. John and Fin were convinced; I wasn't. I've seen Olivia in all her moods; I know her better than anyone else in her life except Elliot. It was hurting her and she wouldn't let herself show it.

Instead, she went on a rampage through a series of boyfriends and casual sex that worried me enough that I took John into my confidence and asked him to keep an eye on Liv. I knew I was acting like an over-protective father, but I couldn't help it. I was particularly worried about this one guy who I saw one night in a bar being a little more aggressive with her than I thought he should, but a few days afterward she came in looking grim and nursing a bruised fist and I never saw the jerk again. She seemed to settle out after that, and Elliot's fling with Dr. Hendrix faded out at about the same time, and they went back to being the partnership I knew and loved and watched and worried over.

I hated to do it, but this year has been so far a really bad one as far as caseload goes. I split up Elliot and Liv and John and Fin and assigned them all cases to work on separately. Olivia, bless her heart, went at her cases with her usual fervor and dedication, and made progress. Elliot, on the other hand, seems a little lost without her. She's closed five cases already; I've taken Elliot out of the lineup of case-catchers because he's having trouble with his. Part of it is the fact that he's suddenly trying to spend as much time with his kids as he can, trying to reassure them that even though he and Kathy aren't living together they both still love the kids. It works; they came out of the divorce relatively unscathed, but it cost Elliot time on the job and a lot of heartache. I didn't blame Kathy for leaving; being a cop is hard enough and SVU especially so; working this unit requires so much of an expenditure of personal emotion that he didn't have much left for her. And it takes two to make a marriage work.

A week ago Elliot came in alone, sat down at his desk and proceeded to stare at Olivia whenever she wasn't looking the whole day. He did the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next. I was starting to wonder what was wrong when I heard Fin and John talking about having seen Olivia's former partner Dave Freeman at O'Malley's four nights previously, and I thought maybe Elliot was reevaluating his treatment of her…until I saw his eyes. And I wondered why it had taken him so long to see what I'd seen coming a year ago.

I don't know what happened that night, the night before they'd come in together and I picked at them about being late. I was upset with them for being late, but what struck me immediately was that it didn't seem to bother either one of them much. They were looking at each other, and their relationship had, magically overnight, been restored to what it had been right before Kathy left. Except for one thing; Elliot still had that realization in his eyes. When I watched them leave, to grab lunch and then pick up Chris Smallwood, I wondered if they were going to talk, to resolve those unresolved issues.

I'm never going to forget the way the bottom dropped out of my life when dispatch called to say shots had been fired and an officer was hit. Olivia was the one who called dispatch; she gave them her badge number, and I know hers as well as I know my own. As Fin drove one sedan out to the scene and I drove the other with John as my passenger, he tried to tell me that they both were okay. We met the ambulance and the uniforms halfway there; the lower East Side belongs to the Two-One, and they sent their own out to help us. We pulled up outside, and I winced at the sight of the corpse of Chris Smallwood lying in the alley, his brains smashed out all over the street. And then I heard this crying, the sound of someone in terrible pain, and I heard Elliot shout that they were on the roof. I could see the twisted metal railing hanging from the edge of the roof as I ran in.

I'll never be able to blot out the sight that met my eyes when I got up there; Olivia, lying on her back, her favorite coat ruined by her blood, screaming and crying, delirious with agony from the hideous distortion of her dislocated shoulders and the bullet wound that seemed to have bled all over her favorite shirt. Elliot had both bare hands pressed to her shoulder, crying as he desperately tried to keep her with him. I've never heard him so broken before as he sobbed out her name, heedless of the tears that streaked his cheeks. I'd never seen him cry before.

And Olivia…she was beyond hearing him, beyond knowing the incredible feat she'd performed. She's not a particularly religious person, even though her personnel jacket lists her as Catholic. But she was begging God to let Elliot survive the fall her pain-wracked mind thought he'd taken, because she couldn't live without him. She was angry at herself for not being strong enough to save him. She was desperate because she needed him, she needed him just so she could live.

Elliot was next to her, oblivious to all of us as he begged her to stay with him, in broken tones I'd never heard him use before, in words I'd never heard from his mouth when talking about anyone. Even Kathy.

And I knew that rules be damned, if they needed each other that much I wasn't going to get in the way. Not in the long term, anyway. Fin took one of Elliot's arms, John took his other, and I cried at him to let her go, let the paramedics give her the help she needed. He fought us until he realized who we were, and then my strong detective fell apart, crying on me as he collapsed from raw anguish and shock and emotional pain, telling me he'd tried to let go, to spare her that pain, and she'd refused to let him fall.

My rookie year, right out of the academy, I'd been fighting with a perp. He somehow grabbed my arm and twisted it, and I remember the pain as my arm dislocated. It was paralyzing; I don't even have a clear memory of what happened because the pain was so all-encompassing. And here, Liv had been shot in the shoulder, and yet had managed to pull Elliot to safety while dislocating both shoulders in the process. I didn't know how she'd done it. I know that if it had been me on the rooftop with Elliot instead of her, I wouldn't have been able to do it. I would have let him go, because there was no way I could have fought through the pain to know I had to hang on. But Olivia had. I felt a surge of pride along with the fear; my little girl was stronger than I was, stronger than she gave herself credit for, and that was going to cost her because she was in so much pain and she looked so terrible, was there a chance that she might not make it or would she be, God forbid, crippled? I prayed that wouldn't happen; her life had been hard enough. She didn't deserve that.

I watched the ambulance pull away, and I had to force myself not to run for the sedan to follow them. I wanted to, but there was someone who needed to be there if Olivia died. I had a vague memory of Olivia slipping out a few times on her lunch break right after one of Elliot's daughters put in an appearance at the station, and of her having a few conversations with someone on the phone named 'Kat' and 'Maureen.' So I stopped to pick up Maureen from college on the way to St. Vincent's. I knew she feared the worst when I walked in; the way she whispered 'Daddy' like she wasn't twenty-one and Elliot was still God made me glad that I didn't have bad news for her about her father. But when she started crying at the mention of Olivia, I knew there was something else there. This wasn't the way a child would feel about her father's partner, this was the way a woman would feel about her friend. I stopped thinking of her as a child then. I stopped when she told me to stop, and somehow we ended up with Kat in the back too.

Talking to them was a real eye opener. Over the years, as Olivia's and Elliot's partnership settled into the comfortable relationship it's been, I'd gotten so accustomed to seeing them together that I always figured I'd lose one of them if they decided to go past friends. But Maureen told me point-blank that I could change the rules; and she reminded me of that long-forgotten incident with Brian Cassidy. It had been only one night, and it wasn't serious…I knew enough about Liv at that point to know she wasn't going to settle down any time soon…but they hadn't been breaking any rules, save the personal one she'd set for herself not to mix business with pleasure. And she worked just as well with Fin, or even John. There was no reason she couldn't 'partner' with one of them while still having a relationship with Elliot. I told Maureen that I'd sit and talk to them both when Olivia got out of the hospital. I didn't allow myself to think about the 'what ifs'.

I didn't regret bringing the girls when I saw Elliot at the hospital. His coat was still smeared with Olivia's blood, and he looked so lost. The girls just threw their arms around him and some of the pain left his face, but not all, and the worst of it was still there. It didn't leave until the doctor told us she was all right, she was going to be all right, and she could go home as soon as they finished giving her the transfusion she needed.

And then he told me that he'd told her he loved her. And she'd said it right back.

I'd been waiting for this for so long it was somewhat anti-climactic. My brain immediately went into overdrive, thinking about what I'd have to do to make the road a little easier for my two best detectives—no, my friend and my surrogate daughter. They were right for each other; it just took them a while to see that.

I look up from the top of my desk where I've been lost in my musings, and realize that the sound level outside the door has picked up considerably. I get up, go to the door, open it. Olivia's standing there, one arm in a sling, the other shoulder heavily-bandaged. But she's clear-eyed and smiling, and there's a light in her eyes I haven't seen in a very long time. She looks, for the first time since I've known her, completely happy.

Elliot chose to take a sick day today, so he's off. He's dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and a casual coat. He's taking Olivia's right now, easing it carefully off her bandaged shoulders, as carefully as if she's a fragile, breakable porcelain doll. Ordinarily she'd snap at him for doing that; I see John and Fin exchange glances when she doesn't.

She and Elliot break off their conversation with the other two when they see me in the doorway, and head straight for me. I stand aside, mutely inviting them to enter my office; they do, and I close the door. I'll talk to John and Fin later.

They both look a little uncomfortable, a little uncertain. I know what they've come to say, and I also know that neither one of them is certain how to approach the topic.

Fine. I'll do it. I approach Olivia first, wrap my arms around her in a hug, and tell her, "I'm glad you're okay."

She looks back at me with heartfelt gratitude and says, "Thank you, Captain."

"Don," I correct her. "I'm not going into 'Captain' mode right now because you're still off duty. I'll wait until you're back before I yell at you for being stupid and going into a dangerous situation alone." But I can't keep my pride out of my voice, my face, my eyes, and they see it.

"I had backup, Don," Elliot speaks up.

"Yeah. Your partner. Who was so determined to save you she went through hell for you." I speak bluntly. "What the hell happened up there, anyway?" I'm curious. I have to ask.

So they tell me, and I sit down hard and grip the desk as I realize just what she went through. She grabbed Elliot's left arm instinctively, the minute he started to go over; her arms were dislocated when Chris Smallwood, and Elliot's, weight came to an abrupt stop. She'd flung herself down on the roof, hoping her own hundred-and-thirty-pound counterweight would be enough to keep Elliot's hundred-and-eighty-pound body and Chris Smallwood's hundred-and-fifty from falling to their deaths. And it had, but just barely, and I hear her voice catch now as she describes feeling her stomach scrape inch by inch over that roof, abrading her skin as the weight inexorably dragged her over. If Elliot hadn't made the decision to let Chris Smallwood fall, all three of them would have died in a six-story drop. And I would have mourned the loss of two of my best detectives, and the entire unit would have been torn apart. I know Olivia's and Elliot's lives were bought with a perp's, and I should feel guilty about his death, but instead all I feel is an immense gratitude to God that they were spared.

It doesn't escape my notice, though, that Elliot's sitting closer to her than he usually does, or that several times during her narrative he reached for her hand and held it gently as she tells me about her pain. She glosses over it, but I know what it cost her; the evidence is right in front of me, in a sling and bandages. Her eyes are too bright, and she didn't snap at Elliot; it's the painkillers they gave her at the hospital before they released her, I'm fairly certain. Later when she comes down off them she's going to be in agony from strained tendons and muscles. I hope the hospital prescribed her some heavy painkillers. She won't take them unless she's in so much pain she can't stand it, and even then she'll take only the minimum dosage.

"Let's stop beating around the bush," I say when I realize that while I thought about this, they have been sitting there, uneasily waiting for 'Dad' to pronounce sentence. "You and Elliot are now officially 'dating', am I right?"

"Yeah." Olivia's gaze falters for a moment, then she lifts her chin and looks me in the eyes. "Elliot's worked here for longer; he has seniority. I've only been here for eight. I came in today to pick up a set of transfer papers; I'm thinking of trying Vice, or maybe work Homicide at the Two-Seven under Van Buren. She's already said she'd welcome the help."

I'm a little surprised; Anita didn't mention she'd talked to Olivia. "Do you want to transfer?" I ask her bluntly.

She looks surprised. "I have to, Cap," she says finally, simply. "There are rules about dating your partner."

"That doesn't mean you have to leave the unit." I wish I could tell them that it doesn't mean they have to split up their partnership, but I can't have them go together into a situation that could be dangerous. After seeing Maureen and Kat's reactions when I came to get them, I can't put them through that again. If something happens to Elliot, Olivia has to be the one to tell them, and vice versa. "I could let you go out to interview witnesses, but as far as picking up perps, someone else will have to go because I can't trust that you'll have the emotional distance to do what's necessary." I see Elliot about to protest, and I hold up a hand. "El, if I'd sent John with you, or Fin, this wouldn't have happened to Olivia."

"If Olivia weren't there I wouldn't be here either."

"Wrong," I say, ignoring the sharp looks they give me. "Fin and John have just as much of an interest in keeping you safe. If one of them had caught you, Chris might not have died because they're both capable of pulling that weight. But you and Chris together outweigh Olivia by at least twice; it's a damn miracle you're here." Elliot can't reason his way out of that; he goes silent.

"Right." I stand up. "Now that we have that settled, Elliot, take Olivia home and take care of her. I'll see you when she's cleared to return to duty." Elliot stares at me, and I feel a smile break over my face. "You had some vacation time coming up." Actually, he didn't; I had to do some petty wrangling, and his annual August vacation, the one he looks forward to because he takes his kids to Rockaway Beach for a week, will have to go, but at this point I don't think he cares. And Maureen and Kat will understand.

They stand, and just before they open my office door, I stop them. "Liv?"

She turns to me. "Yes, Don?"

"Take your meds on time." She looks like she's about to protest, and again I cut her off. "I know you. You're going to skip doses and refuse to take them until you're in so much pain you're writhing from it." I can't get that image of her twisting in agony on that rooftop out of my head; it's going to haunt my dreams for a long time. I never want to see my girl in that much pain again. "So as your commanding officer, I'm ordering you to take your meds on time. Every time."

She grins at me, and I sit down as they exit. Interview over. Actually, I didn't need to add that last bit; the reason I did was to give John and Fin time to get away from the door so that El and Liv wouldn't find them holding glasses to their ears. Sometimes having a close-knit unit like this is a curse.

About an hour after I leave, an hour during which John and Fin watch my door and do some intense talking so quietly I couldn't make out what they were talking about, they both get up from their desks and come to my office. The door is open; they give the doorframe a token tap before walking in. Fin closes the door behind him.

I lace my hands behind my head and wait for one of them to start.

John goes first, putting a sheet of paper on my desk. "I'm requesting a new partner. So is Fin." Fin wordlessly puts another sheet of paper, another request form, beside the one John plunked down.

"Any particular reason why?" I already know the answer, but I want to hear it from them. Have they already decided who's going to work with Explosive Elliot, and who's going to work with Over-concerned Olivia? Or are they going to leave it up to me?

John crosses his arms. "Cap. We heard what you said to Liv and El this morning."

I knew that.

Fin leans over my desk. "I'll work with Liv. John says he's okay with El."

Hmm. Not what I would have done. The uptown girl and the Bronx boy? The once-divorced and the four-times-divorced? Interesting. "Any particular reason?"

"Yeah. Tips." I frowned. Fin explained. "I know how to handle grown-up kids. My current squeeze has two of her own, and they're ambivalent about me. And Liv's such a straight shooter it'll be fun to drag her through the gritty neighborhoods and teach her a little about the other side."

Ah, the back street guy wants to teach the uptown girl a little about the other half. Hmm. El's got more dirt on his soul than Liv does; this could be a good thing for her. I always sent El and Liv out to interview the high-profile witnesses because she and El have that clean-cut uptown look that Fin and John together don't have. But El and John together could do that too, though I will put Liv together with Elliot on the very high-profile ones because people respond better to a female cop asking questions about rape victims. "John?"

John shrugs. "Been there, done that. I've given up on finding true love of my own, Don, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize when two other people have it. If El screws up with Liv it'll break her heart, and I don't want to see that happen if I can help it." Now that is a pretty good reason. John's always been a little protective of Liv; at first I wondered if he sees her as a victim like the ones we help every day because of her past; then later I wondered if he didn't have a little of a 'thing' for her himself. Now I can recognize it as more of a big-brother sort of thing; he sees her as a surrogate little sister, like I see her as a surrogate daughter. So Big Brother wants to make sure Little Sis's new guy doesn't mess with her. I wonder how Liv's going to feel when she finds that out…and I have to fight a smile. After the new arrangement takes effect, I'll sell tickets and find a safe place to watch the explosion when Olivia figures out why John's all of a sudden offering Elliot love advice. It will be…entertaining.

"All right." They smile at each other and leave, and I close my office door and sit for a moment, smiling.

Sometimes a close-knit unit like this one can be a blessing.