Elliot steps off the elevator at the 1-6 with two coffees in hand. Getting Olivia to do anything she doesn't want to is next to impossible but he hopes his chances are slightly better if he plies her with coffee and tries to couch his concern in a casual conversation.
It's a half-assed plan, but it's all he's got.
"Man, you're going to need a lot more than coffee to get Liv to listen to you," Fin greets him, leaning back in his chair.
"Appreciate the support," Elliot replies dryly. He takes a step past Fin's desk, pauses, and takes a step back. "Listen," he starts quietly, "If I can get Liv to - "
"I got your back, man. Rollins and I will handle the place," he says, nodding to the blonde detective hunched over her desk a few paces away. Elliot looks over and she waves a hand in acknowledgment without taking her eyes off her paperwork.
He hasn't interacted with her much, but he doesn't have to to know that she's not his biggest fan.
Elliot clears his throat. "Thanks, Rollins."
"Mm-hmm."
Elliot turns back to Fin, looking too amused by the exchange. "Liv still in her office?"
"Hasn't left."
"All right," he says grimly.
Steeling himself, Elliot takes a breath before he raps on her door, jostling his coffee just slightly.
"Come in."
He opens the door to find Olivia zoned out completely in front of her laptop screen, her fingers moving quickly over the keys..
The dark circles under her eyes are maybe the most prominent he's ever seen them — with the exception of maybe those few months after Sealview — and it makes the Olivia fissure in his heart deepen a little more.
It takes her a few seconds to register his presence, or a presence because she says -
"Did you talk to McGrath about -" She cuts herself off when her eyes snap up to find Elliot's, her face twisting in surprise. "Elliot," she scrapes out.
"Hey, Liv."
She removes her glasses from her face, tossing them onto her desk. "What do you need?" she asks tiredly, smoothing a thumb across her forehead.
What do you need?
Her words settle deep into his stomach, churning his guilt — it's always about him lately, hasn't it? He's been so fucked in the head that there hasn't been any room for anything else.
I'm worried about you, Elliot.
Elliot, tell us what you need.
We need to get you to a hospital.
What do you need?
She taped together the pieces of her heart just enough to help him and now they're falling apart again, worse for the wear because she just keeps giving and he -
Well, he keeps taking.
And he never paused, stopped long enough to really see her. To really see that maybe she's not okay.
"Look, Elliot, can you just tell me what you need so that I can get back to work?" she says roughly.
He snaps out of his thoughts. "Sorry. I just, uh, stopped by to bring you a coffee." He smiles gently, settling her cup down on her desk.
"You...stopped by to bring me coffee?" she asks slowly, eyebrows raised.
"It's decaf," he offers helpfully, settling down into the seat across from her.
"Decaf?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
He shrugs, playing it off. "I've been kind of wired lately. Thought maybe you were, too."
"You haven't gotten any better at lying to me in the last 10 years, Elliot." Olivia scoffs. "Unless, of course, we're talking about letters that your wife wrote to me."
Yeah, he deserved that.
She slams her computer closed. "Fin told you what happened in court today, didn't he?"
It's not completely the truth, but he knows she's still a little salty with Ayanna, and he doesn't want that — for either of them. His boss really values the friendship and working relationship with Olivia, and vice versa, and Elliot knows if he tells Olivia that she'll see it as another betrayal.
A personal one. Which is worse.
"Don't be mad at Fin," he says instead.
"I'm not mad at Fin," she replies tersely.
"Okay." He pauses. "Good." Elliot looks at her, really looks at her, and she shifts uncomfortably under his searching gaze. She's scraped her hair back from her face in a loose ponytail, hiding a little behind her bangs. But it does little to disguise how worn out she looks.
"Don't look at me like that, Elliot," she whispers. "I'm fine."
"Just take the day, Liv," he suggests softly. "No one's going to think less of you for taking the day."
"You haven't been here," she reminds him. "You don't know what it's been like lately."
He hears things here and there when he pops back into headquarters every so often. Knows that the new chief is an absolute dick who has no business overseeing a unit like Special Victims.
Olivia was very fond of Chief Garland, and Elliot knows it was even harder for her to lose Detective Tamin. He saw a lot of young Olivia Benson in her during the few times they've interacted.
"You've lost too many of your people lately, Liv," he says gently. "It would be tough for anyone to deal with."
She cocks her head. "You've got some set of balls on you to say that to me."
He rubs the back of his neck. "I was talking about now. We can revisit that later, but - "
"I am talking about now, Elliot."
He frowns. "I didn't leave you, Olivia. I went undercover."
"How is it that after all this time, you still don't get it?" she asks, incredulous.
Fuck, this is not going at all the way he planned.
He shifts gears. "I want to understand, Liv," he says slowly, carefully. "I promise we can talk about this until we're blue in the face. Later." He sighs. "Will you please just let me take you home?"
"No."
Okay, so he needs to play a little hardball. He can do that.
She's going to be so pissed at him for this, but - "Do it for your son, Olivia." He commands quietly. "Take care of yourself for Noah."
The room goes still and he doesn't dare move, just sits and watches as her spine straightens like a rod, her gaze hardening before his eyes.
"You're a son of a bitch, Elliot," she hisses, pushing away from her desk. She rips her jacket off the back of her chair and digs her purse out of the bottom of her desk drawer before slamming it shut.
And then, she's there in front of him, inches away from his face, eyes flashing. "Next time we play your latest game of emotional manipulation, keep my son's name out of your fucking mouth."
Then she storms out.
It's a tense ride home, filled only with the static of the broken radio, but Elliot's counting it as a win that he even got her to get in the car with him in the first place.
He watches her carefully as she toes out of her shoes and hangs her jacket up before moving further into the apartment, the tension rippling through her. For the first time today, he's starting to think that maybe this wasn't the best idea.
The last thing he wanted was to keep her even more on edge, which, unfortunately, seems to be the way she feels around him now.
Olivia stops in front of the living room window, arms folded across her as she stares absently out at the city. He wants desperately to ask her what happened today, but he's not an idiot. It'll only worsen the situation.
She has to come to him.
It's only a matter of time before she tries to kick him out, so he takes advantage of her preoccupation and settles down onto her couch, fishing his phone out of his back pocket. He pulls up the menu from their favorite neighborhood Chinese restaurant and places an order, enough for leftovers for tomorrow.
He doubts she's eaten all day.
Several minutes go by and she remains unmoved. His mind wanders as he continues to watch her, thinking back through all the years in their partnership, trying to pinpoint any previous incidents of panic attacks.
She hadn't been the most forthcoming about what happened when she went undercover at Sealview, but he knows it was bad. He's almost certain she dealt with some kind of post-traumatic stress then, but she'd never confided in him.
Otherwise, he comes up empty. He recalls Ayanna's words from earlier: I don't know how much you're aware of what went down around here while you were in Rome and I respect Captain Benson too much as a friend and a colleague to overstep.
The more he turns it over in his head, the surer he is that something terrible happened to Olivia while he was gone.
And if that's the case, then -
Well, he'll never forgive himself.
"You can go now." When she speaks, he almost misses it. Her voice is low, cracked, depleted of anything.
"Liv - "
"You're dismissed, detective."
He ignores her, switching gears. "I ordered Chinese food from the place on the corner. Have you eaten today?"
She turns around, finally, to face him. "Elliot, what is this?"
"You had a hard day, Olivia." He swallows. "So this is me, asking you what you need."
"I don't need anything from you, Elliot." Her voice breaks, her eyes shiny. "I stopped needing things from you a long time ago."
He lets out a helpless noise. "Liv - "
She cuts him off with the shake of her head, moving past him toward the hallway. "Please don't be here when I wake up."
Olivia expects him to leave and maybe a large part of her even wants him to, but he's done enough of that lately. And maybe if she wakes up and sees that he's still here it will help...something.
He'll settle for even the slightest bit of progress between them.
When the Chinese food arrives, he unpacks it all and sticks it in the fridge. He doesn't have much of an appetite himself and won't waste whatever time he has while she's asleep.
He can't sit still, needs to distract himself from spiraling over all the endless possibilities of Olivia's trauma, so he takes stock of her fridge and her cupboards to see what he can whip up in little time and freeze or refrigerate for her to eat later.
She loves chili and it's simple and quick enough to make a large batch, so he pulls out everything he needs and gets to work.
While the chili simmers, he tidies up her kitchen and living room — things he can do without invading too much of her personal space. He washes and puts her dishes away, folds the throw blankets balled up at the end of the couch, stacks and organizes her mail, sweeps the kitchen, and hangs up a couple of Noah's jackets.
It's not much, but it's a start.
After the chili has cooled enough, he starts dividing it up into containers when he hears her bedroom door open.
"You're still here," Olivia observes, surprised. He turns around to find her adorably sleep-rumpled and standing in her living room, surveying the area not unlike she surveys a crime scene. "And you...cleaned my apartment."
"Just a few things. Nothing crazy."
Her astonished gaze meets his before it falls to the counter behind him. "I thought I smelled chili."
"I thought it would be nice for you to have this week. Something easy to warm up so you wouldn't have to think about cooking." He hesitates. "There's enough for almost the full week."
"I, um - " She clears her throat, blinking. "Thank you."
"Do you want a bowl now? Or maybe some of the Chinese food?"
She bites her lip. "Are you having some, too?"
A small smile flirts with his lips. "I could eat."
"Okay."
Okay.
They eat quietly, the clank of spoons against bowls the only sound that can be heard between them.
"Thank you," Liv says, dropping her spoon into her bowl after her last bite. She looks better now after some rest and food, the color returning to her cheeks.
"Sure."
She stares at him curiously. "You didn't have to do any of this."
"I wanted to, Olivia."
She nods slowly, looking away from him. He wonders if she believes him or thinks he's here out of some twisted obligation born from guilt.
"What is it?"
"I'm just - I'm just so tired, Elliot."
"Do you want to go back to sleep?"
"No. I mean, I'm tired."
Weary in her bones, his mother had said.
Carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders since she was just a little girl taking care of her alcoholic mother while bearing the brunt of Serena's struggle to deal with her own trauma.
Sacrificing herself for the job. Always putting herself second or third or fourth while no one else ever put her first.
Especially him, the one person she trusted the most. The one who destroyed her heart — the most selfless heart he's ever known — at the expense of saving his own fucked-up marriage.
She looks so small and vulnerable in front of him right now.
"I know, Liv." He says gently. He hesitates. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"No."
It's not the answer he wanted, but he won't push. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"You don't owe me anything, Olivia. When you're ready to talk about it, about any of it," he amends, "I'll be here."
"Thank you."
"Do you wanna watch TV for a little while? Until Noah gets home."
He won't stick around longer than that, these next few hours. Olivia's not ready for him to meet Noah and Elliot knows there's nothing on Earth that will lift her spirits more than spending quality time with her son.
She cocks her head. "Don't you have an alter ego to get back to?"
"No," he replies easily. "I'm not going back."
Olivia lifts an eyebrow, surprised. "You're not?"
"No. I pulled myself from the operation."
"Why?"
He looks at her, really looks at her. "Because this is more important."
She sighs. "Elliot, I appreciate that, but I'll be fine. Really. I'm a big girl."
"I know," he says, slightly amused. No one would ever say Olivia Benson was anything but 'fine' — least of all her. "But I want to. It's my decision."
"Don't screw up an operation out of some warped sense of guilt - "
"Olivia," he interrupts firmly. "I'm here because I want to be. And the operation will be fine without me."
Silence. And then - "Okay."
Maybe it's just a trick of the light, but he'd swear her eyes just got a little brighter.
She sits a foot away from him on the couch, a throw draped over her curled-up form. There's some old Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts film on TBS that he recognizes, but he's not paying much attention to it. He keeps stealing glances at her, imagining what this could look like in a perfect world if they were able to repair things between them. How warm she'd be under his hands while they snuggled up after work or on a lazy weekend morning.
If he tries hard enough, he can hear Noah's chatter, Eli's too —
And then in other scenarios, it's just the two of them, greedily stealing all the time back together that they'd missed over the last 24 years.
"You're staring," she calls him out without taking her eyes off the screen. But there's no malice in it and he thinks maybe he hears a touch of amusement.
"Yeah," he chuckles as he ducks his head away, embarrassed. "Sorry."
When he feels her eyes on him a minute later, steady and unwavering, he can't stop the flush that creeps up his neck.
During the next commercial break, Olivia mutes the television, drawing his attention back toward her.
She clears her throat, avoiding meeting his eyes. "A Confidential Informant was supposed to testify today. He was a key witness in our case and had just spent the last 4 months gathering intel as a UC in a prostitution ring. He never showed up today." She presses her lips together, shaking her head. "A uni went to his apartment to do a wellness check. They found him dead on the floor with his throat cut."
"To prevent him from testifying," Elliot deduces.
Olivia nods. "You know there's a staff shortage at Rikers?"
"Yeah, I heard things are a mess over there."
"The ringleader set it all up from inside his cell. As easy as that." She snaps her fingers.
He falters. "And it was triggering for you?"
"Yeah," she says faintly, picking at a thread on her blanket. "I haven't had a panic attack like that in a long time."
He has to tread carefully here so he doesn't spook her. "Do you have any idea why?"
Olivia chuckles humorlessly. "Well," she starts. "I haven't talked to my shrink about it, but I imagine there's a couple of things at play there."
She's tense again, anxious, and all he wants to do is take her in his arms and hold her there for awhile. "Liv, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
Olivia swallows roughly. "You have to wait until I'm done, Elliot," she whispers. "You can't say anything until I tell you that I'm done. Promise me that."
A fist forms in his stomach, filling him with dread. "I promise."
She takes a deep breath. "Two years after you left, I was kidnapped and tortured for four days by a psychopath we'd been trying to prosecute. A man by the name of William Lewis."
"I'm not going to go into the details. Not today." She brushes a thumb across her forehead. "To make a long story short, we prosecuted him and he escaped from prison. He and I had another...encounter. He's dead now."
Liv pauses, struggling with it. "But when I found out that man ordered a hit from inside prison, where people should be safe from him, I spiraled. Badly."
I don't know how much you're aware of what went down around here while you were in Rome and I respect Captain Benson too much as a friend and a colleague to overstep.
Jesus Christ, it's so much worse than he could have ever imagined. "Liv - "
Her eyes cut to his, sharp and fierce. "You promised."
He closes his mouth, goes quiet.
"I don't want to talk about him, Elliot. You can process it on your own time and someday I'll tell you about it, but there's too much other shit going on to dive into that right now."
Olivia tosses the blanket off her, rising from the couch.
"The other part of what happened today has nothing to do with William Lewis and has everything to do with the fact that I can't seem to stop people from leaving. From disappearing on me."
"It feels so - " she gestures with her hands as she starts to pace in front of him, "out of control and there's nothing I can do about it. Garland was forced out. Tamin quit. You evaporated into thin air." She scrubs a hand over her mouth, tugging at the corners of her lips in thought.
"You went radio silent for three months and that triggered me, Elliot." She stops in her tracks, sudden as she faces him. "You show up here 6 months ago, broken and all but asking me to ignore the last 11 years to help you."
"And I do because it's you, but then we never fucking talked about any of it and then you left...again."
She's angry, worked up as she starts to pace again. "You can talk now," she spits out, waving dismissively.
"It wasn't my choice, Olivia." Or at least that's what he thought until Ayanna corrected him today. But he won't mention that. "That's why I texted you not to worry - "
"That's bullshit, Elliot. The balls on you, seriously." Olivia scoffs in disbelief, shaking her head.
"It feels good to not be myself for a little while," she mocks. "Screw you for ever saying that to me when all I have done lately is be there for you and the second it gets hard, you dip out on your life, your family...on me."
"The second it gets hard?" He lets out a noise of disbelief. "Since when have things between us ever been easy, Olivia?"
"You're right, Elliot," she agrees coldly. "But you see, the difference is that only one us has to grow a fucking chia pet on our face and live in the back of a van to cope with it."
Jesus Christ. He's out of his seat now, frustration coursing through him. Fuck, he's never met anyone so goddamn infuriating. "That's a low blow, even for you - "
"If you didn't want to be around me that much, Elliot, you could've just stayed gone," she sneers. "You certainly would've done me a favor."
"Goddamn it, Olivia. I love you," he grits out. "And everything is so fucking complicated all the time that I don't know how to handle it."
"The hell you love me." She gets in his face then, eyes wild, pained. "You left me. You left me and then you let her write that letter to me." she croaks, swallowing hard. "You let her tell me that what we had wasn't real. And then you handed it to me anyway after you buried her."
Olivia licks her lips. "So I am sorry," she starts sarcastically, "That I'm not more pleased after you've made yourself some kind of fucking martyr."
"For all I knew, you were happy -"
"Oh, please - "
"Fin said you'd had a kid. There'd been some men in your life. I - " He shrugs helplessly. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again after they pulled you off the case and I just - " He shakes his head.
She sighs. "You just what?"
"I needed you to know that I hoped you had found someone worthy of you." He clenches his fists at his thighs. "And I needed you to know that for me, it was always you and I."
"Me," she says, exasperated.
"What?" he asks, confused.
"Me." Olivia points to herself. "'You and me.' Your grammar still sucks, Elliot." She rolls her eyes.
He chuckles at that, thankful for the brief moment of levity. It hangs between them there for a moment, gives him what he needs to feel brave again. "Do you think you'll ever be able to forgive me?"
"I don't know," she replies honestly. "But I want to try."
"Okay." He nods. "I understand. But until then?"
Elliot takes a step closer to her, slow and easy as he closes the remaining distance between them. She eyes him cautiously, nervous, as both of his hands come up to cup her chin, his thumb smoothing across her lips. "What are you doing?" she whispers.
He laughs. "Benson, if you need me to tell you, maybe I'm not doing it right."
"You ass - "
He silences her with the crash of his mouth onto hers, hungry and eager. And it's more — fuck, it's so much more — than he ever imagined it would be. She's warm, so warm under his hands, pliant, willing, and greedy.
"Elliot," she murmurs against his lips.
"Hmm?" he asks, his mouth breaking away to trail down to her neck.
She moans, her nails digging into the nape of his neck. "You're shaving your beard tonight, right?"
He laughs, nipping at her a little harder than necessary for that. "Anything for you, baby."
This took quite literally everything out of me to write, so...hopefully it doesn't disappoint. Let me know!