He hasn't felt hatred this deep and consuming in a long time. His blood simmers with it and the longer he looks at her face, the more his hands twitch to inflict pain. He turns his body away from her and rests his hand on the double-sided mirror.
"I was never in-love with you Elliot. I just wanted you to be putty in my hands." Angela Wheatley pronounces from her seat on the other side of the interrogation table. He stands on the other side of the room while Bell sits at the table across from her.
She isn't being sardonic. In fact, her affect seems disappointed. Like she sincerely thought she would get away with this.
"I was never sick. Richard would never do that to me."
"Why did you do it?" Bell asks her.
"Richard is my family. At the end of the day… we'll always be a team" she is still looking at Elliot, beholding the back of his head, frantic to see a reaction from him.
"It was me who framed Eli." She states and Elliot shakes with disdain. His palms are clammy, and his skin feels boiling hot. He will not give her the satisfaction of reacting.
"Not because he deserved it, but because you did Elliot."
She keeps saying his name as though they are close acquaintances, and it makes his stomach roll. He had allowed himself to be played by this woman. He believed that she was just another victim of Richard Wheatley's. He fell for her theatrics.
He can't see Bell because he is still turned around, but he imagines that she feels sick, too. She has been by his side throughout this entire mess, and he is humiliated. He knows she is allowing Angela this time to wallow, as she is digging her own grave, but it doesn't make it any easier to listen to.
Angela gawks at Elliot. She scoffs a maddened sound and looks Ayana in the eyes.
"Richard found out there was another woman in his life. I had my lawyer ask around. He came back to me with the name of an NYPD Captain…" she chuckles under her breath and returns her gaze to Elliot's head.
"How impeccable is that." She lets out breathlessly. "Olivia Margaret Benson, darling of the NYPD, Captain of the city's cruelest unit… taking Manhattan's most repulsive criminals off the streets, a true saint walking on earth."
Elliot barely hears her monologue while he uses every coping mechanism within his power to compose himself. He knows where this is going.
"I had her ran off the road, although, I'd hoped for a more fatal injury than a broken ankle." Angela delivers the admission, and you could hear a pin drop. It makes the room feel like a vacuum.
Elliot's ears are buzzing, and his shirt sticks to the sweat gathering on his back. He needs to leave this room.
The thought of his lips intimately touching this woman is enough to make vomit rise up in his throat. Revulsion physiologically consumes every part of his being.
Without turning around, he makes a quick exit and allows the door to crash behind him. He knows Ayana can handle it from here. He paces back and forth in the area outside the room before lobbing a stool at the brick wall across from him.
His thoughts are running rampant with images of Angela holding his hand, Angela's tongue sliding against his own, Angela's arms wrapping around his body. He's reeling, feels nauseous, feels taken advantage of. He sought out comfort from someone who wanted him buried, wanted him living in torment. He had placed vulnerable parts of him into the palms of someone who traumatized his little boy. Someone who looked at his son with his trauma and grief and innocence and made him believe he was responsible for murder.
He allowed himself to be manipulated by someone who tried to kill Olivia. He almost descents to the ground with the shock of this disclosure. Leaning forward, his palms grasping his kneecaps, he tries to catch his breath. He counts to 10 and forces deep breaths.
He thinks of that moment in his hotel room when he had Olivia and each of his children trying to pull him in from sea, trying to protect him from himself, trying to love him. And he had chosen to go to someone who wanted to obliterate him, instead.
The memory is interrupted by Ayana closing the door. She walks up to him, places her hand on his back.
"Take the rest of the day, Stabler." He nods but doesn't meet her eyes. He doesn't need to be told twice. He knows Eli is at home, having spoken to him before this mess of an interview began.
Elliot gathers his things and takes a walk to the one location he knows he'll find forgiveness and serenity.
…
When Elliot walks into the precinct, he is startled by how calm it feels. While he had been experiencing hell on earth over at his office, hers seems to be resting. He takes note of his watch, a quarter to four o' clock.
The detective's desks are empty for the moment as he walks by them straight to her cracked open door.
He's met with an unexpected, yet equally precious face on the other side of her desk.
"Hi Elliot!" Noah's little voice rings out. He's sitting in Liv's chair and grasping a hand-held video game in his hands.
He hasn't seen the boy since their Christmas get-together a few weeks ago but it seems he has fond memories of Elliot's face.
"Hey bud, what're you doing here?" Elliot is pleasantly surprised to feel that her son's presence calms him down, too. Her magical healing powers must have been passed down to her child.
"Lucy is sick today, so my mom picked me up from school…" Noah is observing Elliot in contemplation and a minute passes before he adds, "What're you doing here?"
Elliot snickers… this is Liv's kid.
"I was just hoping to see your mom." Elliot says with a grin. Hoping seems like a gross understatement, more like longing, desperate, aching to see this boy's mother. "Mind if I hangout for a little?"
"No, I don't mind." He goes back to playing his video game, Nintendo if Elliot remembers correctly.
Elliot tries to decide if he should embrace the comfortable silence or strike up conversation with the little boy whose opinion of him means more than anyone else's in the entire universe.
"It's probably boring hanging out in your mom's office, huh?" Elliot offers.
"I actually like when mom lets me hangout here. Her office is real big and she keeps my favorite candy in this drawer." He bends over to open the drawer in question and pulls out a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Elliot makes note of Noah's favorite candy.
"Plus, her gross dark chocolates." Noah adds and pulls out a bag of Dove dark chocolates with a grimace on his delightful face.
Elliot's chest feels warm. A lot about Olivia has changed, but not her favorite candy.
The little boy is shoving the candy bags back into the drawer when he adds, "plus uncle Finn sometimes takes me into the interrogation rooms and lets me pretend to question him…" he smirks like he's shared a secret.
"Your uncle Finn is a goofy old man." Elliot throws out with a giddy chuckle. Finn is the one common ground he and Noah share, aside from his mother.
"I heard that, Stabler!" They hear yelled from the other room and they both giggle.
Elliot feels a thousand pounds lighter when suddenly, Rollins is poking her head into the office. Elliot has only made eye contact with this woman a handful of times and he can feel the distrust rolling off of her.
"Come on little man, I'm taking you to dance class. Your mom got stuck at a long and boring meeting. She's going to Facetime you after dance. You can have movie night at my place, how's that sound?" She addresses Noah with the most kindness he's ever seen from her.
"Okay! Bye Elliot!" The boy yells while throwing his bookbag over his shoulders and skipping out of the room.
"Stabler" Rollins acknowledges with a head tilt in his direction. He stands up. Elliot is an arrogant bastard but he knows this woman means a lot to Olivia so he will behave.
He holds a hand out to her, "Rollins, how are you?"
She gives him a cautious eye before grabbing his hand in her own.
"Fine… thanks." She lets go and turns to leave. Before she exits out the door, she turns half-way towards him.
"We're heading out for the night, but Liv should be back in about 45 minutes. It's been a long day." She adds for good measure, "Noah is staying with me." And then she's gone, and the office is damn near silent.
…
Elliot orders takeout from an ancient place around the corner and picks up a six pack of the strongest beer the deli has. An eight percent IPA. It's Friday and they've both had long days. And he misses her something frantic. He thinks they deserve to get a little tipsy and fall into each other, something he plans on making a reality in her office.
He's texting back Maureen about dinner on Sunday when he's blessed by the silky sound of her velvet lilt.
"Elliot… hi" she greets him in surprise.
She is a sight for sore eyes, dressed in black with her pretty hair flowing over her shoulders. He loves her like this. But the ache to see her in nothing but his T-shirt and a clean face won't be silenced. She looks gorgeous, as always, but exhausted. And he can't wait to take care of her. Angela Wheatley's earlier admissions slamming back to the forefront of his mind. What would he have done if she had been gone to him so soon after finding her again? He can't fathom it.
He stands to greet her, "Hey… I'm sorry to just drop in like this but…"
She cuts him off, "is everything okay?" he hates that her initial reaction to seeing him in her space is that he must need her for something.
"Liv, I just needed to see you. Everything is okay… I had a hard day at work, some things about the Wheatley trial that I don't feel like getting into right now." She moves slowly over to her chair, sets her bag down and takes off her blazer as she listens to him.
He tries, dreadfully, not to be preoccupied by the shape of her alluring curves. "Are you hungry? I grabbed takeout and some heavy beers, figured you'd earned at least one." He adds before sitting down in the seat across from her. They are both seating at opposite sides of her desk now.
She's doing that shy grin she does for him, now. And he doesn't know how he survived a decade without her.
He is handing her containers of food and opening some when she says, "Noah told me that my 'friend Elliot came to hangout' with him today," as she air quotes her boy's exact words with a small smile around her bite.
Elliot chuckles, "well I came looking for you, but I got Noah Benson instead… he's a beautiful kid, Liv… just like his mother."
They make soothing eye contact while she takes a sip of her beer. He's reading her when he realizes she is considering a thought. It's silent for a beat when she says, "I found Noah in a dresser drawer when he was only a few months old. We were busting a home suspected of sex-trafficking." She is playing with her food now with her gaze pointed down.
Elliot holds his breath and listens to her as if his life depends on it. He is both shocked to learn that Noah isn't biologically hers and unsurprised by this discovery. This is the type of woman his Olivia is, and this makes complete sense to him.
She pauses, meets his eyes, and continues… "I followed his ACS case. I went to every hearing. He was bounced from home to home, nobody wanted him. This perfect baby boy." Her voice trails off for a moment as if she is lost in her own memories.
"The judge just addressed me one day, after another foster home failed him." A small smile comes to her face as she takes another sip of her beer. "She said, 'Call it a judge's hunch." And chuckles.
"I brought him home that night… he saved my life." She adds, and Elliot can tell that she just opened a critical door into their growing relationship.
"You raised him all on your own." He utters… he remembers assuring her that they were wrong for denying her adoption rights all those years ago. Look at Noah Benson. He is joyful, nourished, thriving, treasured.
"We are a team, him and I." She says with a knowing smirk and Elliot's ears feel warm. "He's been talking about 'the Stablers' nonstop since Christmas, Elliot. Eli may have to come over and entertain him with video games and Harry Potter before I lose my mind." She chuckles around a bite of food.
"As long as I can come over, too." Elliot dares to add with a smile that's all teeth, "maybe I can entertain his mom." And now Elliot's whole face goes warm.
She pauses mid drink to meet his eyes, he sees her blush. They share quiet, teasing smiles, and finish their meals.
He stands up to begin gathering their garbage. "El," she stops as if she needs to work up the nerve, "come over? We can just watch TV, or-"
"Okay." He cuts her off, because being with this woman is the closest he has ever felt to peace and he'll do whatever it takes to stay with her. He peeks at her with a beaming grin as he finishes cleaning. Try as he might, he can't get the smile off of his face.
He's helping her back into her blazer when he adds, "Does the Captain ever get to unwind, or does she sleep in this get-up?" He drops into her ear from behind her and she turns her face to meet his eyes.
"I guess you'll get to find out here, soon." She tosses back as they walk out of her office door. Her with her purse in one hand and her glasses and phone in the other. Him, with his belongings in one hand and his other on her lower back. They exit the precinct together and Elliot knows he needs this woman for the rest of his days.
Finish.