The polish on her middle finger had started to chip. She had forgotten to pick up nail polish remover on the way home yesterday. She'd have to do that tonight.
"...Olivia?"
But what about her car? She drove to work today. If she wanted to stop she'd have to go home first and then walk to the corner store.
"Olivia."
She could take a cab, leave her car at the station overnight. After the bourbons that was probably the smartest idea. Take a cab, get out at the store. Walk the rest of the way. What time was it?
"Liv!"
She blinked. Elliot was looking at her with a strange expression, pushing a phone toward her. For the first time, she realized a phone was ringing. Her phone was ringing.
Looking down at it, she felt the air returning to her lungs.
It was Barba. The briefing. She had court in the morning. It was almost 10. She was 3 bourbons in.
Elliot hadn't moved, the look on his face was unreadable. He glanced down at her phone, then up at her, then back to his drink.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, picking up the phone. "Benson."
"Where are you, I've been calling you for over an hour," Barba's voice was harsh in her ear. "Did something happen to Noah?"
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I just… Noah's fine, I just lost track of time, I stepped out and left my work phone in my office."
"Is everything okay?" Barba asked. She closed her eyes, steadying herself.
"Yes, yes, I'm fine," she said, forcing authority back into her voice. "I'm just down the street, do you need me to come back?"
"Have you been drinking?" Barba pushed again. Silently cursing him for being able to read her so well, she made up an excuse.
"No," she said, playing into it. "Well, just one. Fin and I just stepped out to celebrate. I hadn't been able to properly congratulate him and Phoebe. I just didn't realize it had gotten so late."
Next to her, Elliot's eyebrows raised, and he smiled down into his drink.
"Well, just remember you're due in court at 11," Barba admonished, his tone turning playful. "Did you at least get a chance to look over the file I sent you before you decided to play hooky?"
She hoped the sigh of relief that left her wasn't as audible through the phone. Assuring him she had indeed read through the brief, and would do so again before showing up tomorrow, she hung up the phone.
***elliot***
He told her he loved her. He couldn't believe it.
Yet here he was, sitting in the afterglow of his confession, feeling more at peace than he had in months. Maybe even years.
The confession had been unexpected, even to him, so it didn't surprise him in the least when she went silent. He almost welcomed the phone call though. He had to admit the silence was lasting a moment to long.
"You should go," Elliot said quietly.
"Elliot..."
"It's ok," he said, his face breaking into a smile. Work came first, he knew that. There would be time.
He hoped
As she began to gather her things, he regarded her. Her brow was furrowed, one eyebrow raised, the way it always was when she was deep in thought. She didn't seem upset, if anything she just seemed caught off guard. He took that as a good sign.
Their eyes met once more as she draped her coat over her arm. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, but he decided to take the pressure off.
"Dinner," he suggested. "Saturday night?"
Relief flooded her face, though she tried to hide it.
"Saturday," she agreed, cracking a smile.
***olivia***
As she left Joe's she closed her eyes, letting the cold air swirl around her. It had been warm in there, too warm, but she didn't know if it was the thermostat or her own anxiety making her sweat.
Elliot Stabler had just admitted he'd been in love with her, and she'd said nothing.
She'd planned a drug store trip, but she'd said absolutely nothing. Maybe she was panicking. Maybe she was having a stroke.
It was like her brain and her body were no longer connected. Like the signals from her brain were firing out into darkness and her body had gone numb. This was the perfect moment, this was the thing she'd always wanted, the thing she'd waited decades for.
Elliot Stabler had just told her he loved her. It was starting to sink in. The words were beginning to touch down on the surface of her consciousness, their weight settling into the folds of her brain.
She kept having to remind herself, playing the moment over and over in her head. It didn't feel real. It felt like a dream, like the moment right before you wake up and you realize you're dreaming, and that the sugar-coated candy land around you is about to vanish.
Like it was too good to be true. How could it be? What had she done to get everything she'd ever wanted, just handed to her, no strings.
After all, isn't that what he'd just done? He'd sat there, in the middle of a cop bar, and handed his heart right over to her, wrapped up neatly in years of therapy, and intentionality, and cruel life experience.
But they weren't 25 anymore, there wasn't any room for error. They weren't those kids who used to run around the squad room, fighting crime by day and drinking in rowdy cop bars by night. The world was different now, and they were different.
Noah flashed through her mind. She hadn't even told him about Noah.
Who she should tell first, she wondered. Did she tell Elliot about her son? Or her son about her old partner? Neither were conversations she thought she could handle tonight, that much she knew.
She walked for a few more blocks before hailing a cab. Noah was at Lucy's for the night, meaning she could have the night to herself.
And tonight of all nights, she wanted nothing more than to sink into the bathtub, get in bed, and sleep.
***elliot***
Elliot watched her go, his eyes lingering on the doorway long after she was gone. Eventually, he turned back to the bar, finishing his drink and reveling in the feeling radiating through him.
It was surreal, the feeling that he'd done the thing he'd always wanted to do. What was next? Everest? He'd already crested his highest of summits, and he couldn't imagine a higher high.
Almost.
Olivia's silence had been expected; her phone call hadn't. Once again, he wondered who he'd spirited her away from that night, recalling the fact she'd been waiting for someone, and trying not to connect that to the urgent male voice on the other end of the line.
"You all set or you got one more in you?" Joe asked, holding up the bottle. Elliot shook his head. Like Olivia, he too had commitments in the morning he needed to be clear-headed for.
"I'm all set," he said, sliding his empty glass toward the bartender. "Just close me out."
Joe shook his head, waving a hand as he set Elliot's glass in the sink behind him. "Like I told the captain, Ed took care of a few before... you know."
Elliot nodded vaguely. Everything in him wanted to ask Joe why, but he held his tongue. Why was Ed Tucker buying drinks for Olivia? In advance, no less, and clearly at no expense. He wasn't a big bourbon drinker, but he could tell from the bottles' placement on the shelf alone that it wasn't cheap.
As he grabbed his coat and looked around the near-empty bar, his curiosity got the better of him.
"Hey, Joe," he called. Joe turned back to him. "The drinks, you know why Tucker did it?"
The corners of the bartender's mouth pulled up in a wry smile.
"I don't wanna speak ill of the dead," he said softly. "But he should have told her sooner."
The bartender gathered the two empty glasses from the bar in front of him. After a moment he sighed and looked up at Elliot.
"All he told me when he paid was he was making up for all the time they wouldn't get," he said. Then, with a nod, he turned.
"Have a good night sir."
With that, Joe sidled down the bar to close out his last few tabs.
Left with more questions than answers, Elliot sighed. Digging into his coat pocket, he tossed all the cash he had on him on the bar, nodded at Joe and stepped out onto the street.
***olivia***
It was Tuesday. That meant she had 3 days to come up with a response.
She turned off the faucet and leaned back in the tub, relaxing into the steaming, bubbling water. When she and Brian had been apartment hunting she'd scoffed at a bathtub. What was the point? Time for baths wasn't something she imagined having, especially with her job. Now she made time for them, despite having a first grader and squad to look after.
It had been a minute since she'd thought about Brian, she realized. Or Tucker, for that matter. She'd been caught off guard more than once tonight.
The drinks had been unexpected. Tucker had left her a letter, before he died, explaining why he did it, that he was leaving everything to his wife, and apologizing that they didn't have more time. He never said anything about drinks.
But Joe's had been their spot, ever since the night he convinced her to try the bourbon. It escaped her at the time, but he'd really been convincing her to try him.
And she had, and she'd been happy, the happiest she'd ever been. Brian had made her happy, she supposed, but momentarily, fleetingly. Situationally. David Haden hadn't had the time.
Ed Tucker had made her happy even when she wasn't thinking about it.
Could she say the same for Elliot? She'd been happy when he was her partner. Almost.
Like him, true happiness had lain just beyond her reach. She'd supplemented it, chased it, lusted after it, but even after a decade of running she never quite caught up with it.
And then he'd just left, and the dozen years of trust they'd built, painstakingly, had shattered. She was trying not to hold that against him but it was like a downed power line waiting to electrocute her.
Love was the storm that downed it.
The pendulum swing from a decades-long unrequited slow burn to a hot, lustful, inevitably doomed affair with an assistant district attorney should have been her first red flag, but she'd been blissfully unaware. Consequences were unimportant because for the first time she was free to fall. Unafraid of falling in and out of lust, and dark eyes and uninhibited entanglements.
Falling into those who were so like him, so Elliot-adjacent, as if anything with a badge and a temper would be a suitable placeholder for the real thing.
The real thing which she craved, not desperately like a drug but wistfully, impossibly, the way the sun coveted starlight, the way darkness begged for light.
The way the things that could kill her had always made her feel the most alive.
Yes, she thought as she closed her eyes. She'd always been in love with Elliot. That had never been the question.
The question was whether or not she should be.
***elliot***
Elliot walked home in silence, letting the air fill his lungs and the tension leave his shoulders.
The walk back to his apartment was short. When he'd been apartment hunting he'd gravitated toward the West Village. He hadn't realized why until tonight.
Years ago, when he'd leave the office late at night, he'd wander the streets before getting in his car. There had always been a million reasons to go home but he'd always managed to find the one not to. The one last stack of paperwork. The one last run at a suspect. The one last drink with his partner.
Even after the last of everything, when he'd run out of "one more's" he'd always take a walk around the block. These streets had borne the brunt of his frustrations. They'd felt the drops of blood that dripped from his knuckles after they'd collided with a target. They'd felt the tears that he refused to shed until he was certain he was alone, solitary, and hunched beneath the streetlights.
Yes, the grid of streets surrounding the precinct had held him gently through the years, allowing him to haunt their sidewalks and alleyways, providing him solace from the outside world. Later, when he'd been searching for a different kind of solace, he hadn't even thought of looking anywhere else.
The building was old, but maintained, yet another former factory that had been turned into luxury condos. He hadn't intended to buy something — he was fine renting, uninterested in the commitment of ownership. His realtor had talked him into it, tossing around words like "resale value" and "buyers market." In the end he'd told her to do whatever cost him the least.
He'd ended up with a loft over the Highline, with views of the Hudson and Hoboken that he was told people would kill for. He hadn't spent enough time at home to see it.
Unlocking the door, he tossed his coat and scarf onto a coat rack. He made his way into the kitchen, minimal furnishings, but not for lack of trying. Maureen had helped him unpack, chastising him for all of the choking hazards he'd collected over the years.
"Dad, I'm serious," Maureen said, pulling a bucket filled with bottle caps out of reach of the baby crawling across the floor. "You can't have this stuff all over the place if you're gonna watch her."
"Come on," Elliot said, scooping the little girl up. "I've done this five times, you don't think I can take care of a kid?"
The baby flung her arm up and smacked Elliot in the face. He leaned away and stepped back, almost tripping over the cord to a mini-fridge.
"We'll be just fine," he said, nosing the side of the baby's head. "Won't we Ella? You and Grandpa will be just fine."
He smiled as he pulled a Diet Coke from the fridge. Grandpa. Of all the titles he imagined having one day "grandpa" wasn't one of them. He always knew his kids would have kids, he just never really thought he'd be around to see them. As he settled into the leather sofa and clicked on the tv, he shook his head. First grandkids, now Olivia.
Old age sure was full of surprises.
***olivia***
Three days had flown by.
The case she'd been pouring all of her energy into had drained her, set her at odds with Barba, fraying her last nerve.
Saturday was supposed to be her day off, but she'd been up before dawn, resigned to going into the precinct and catching up on the paperwork she'd pushed around her desk all week instead of doing.
"I thought you were taking today off."
Olivia jumped as she rounded the corner, not expecting to see anyone so early on a weekend. Fin was standing beside his desk, a cup of coffee and a box of donuts in his hands, clearly having beaten her inside by a minute.
"Those all for you," she deflected, raising her eyebrow at the donuts.
Fin ignored her.
"Didn't you listen to Garland," he called as she walked into her office. When she didn't respond he followed her. "I'm just saying, when the chief gives you a day off, you should take it."
"Fin, that's great, but I have paperwork to finish," she said. When she didn't hear him leave she looked up at him. "That my sergeant was supposed to do until he got engaged and started sneaking out early."
Fin rolled his eyes at her.
"She made me start drinking herbal tea," he said. "I don't wanna know what she'll start making me eat for dinner if I'm not there to cook it."
Olivia laughed, eliciting a smile from Fin before he turned back to the squad room.
"If you're still here by ten I'm carrying you out myself," he called a few minutes later. Shaking her head, she smiled.
"And I'll tell Phoebe you're drinking coffee behind her back," she called back. If he had a retort, Fin kept it to himself, but four hours later he was knocking on her office door.
"Anything you want to talk about?" He said casually, leaning against her doorframe. She looked up at him over her glasses, pursing her lips and shrugging. Fin sauntered into the room and leaned over the chair opposite the desk. "Anything you're avoiding?"
"What would I be avoiding?" She asked, though the way he was asking he knew something was up.
"The same thing you're avoiding telling Barba about," he said, crossing his arms and smirking. She narrowed her eyes. "He called for an update on the Meisenheimer case. And he told me to stop taking you out drinking before court."
Olivia sighed, dropping her face into her hands.
"I'm sorry, I told him I was with you, I should have told you," she said.
"Why are you lying to him in the first place, Liv," Fin asked, dropping into the chair. Olivia looked at him, realizing he was probably one of the only people who would understand. After regarding him for a moment, she looked down into her lap, feeling like a child about to be admonished.
"I was with Elliot," she said simply. Fin raised his eyebrows but remained silent. "He showed up on Tuesday, and I…" she didn't know what to say. "We went out for drinks, and Barba called and I didn't want to have to explain myself, so I said I was with you."
"You went for drinks," Fin said. "With Stabler."
Olivia looked at him. Anger flared in his eyes and she watched he grappled with a betrayal she was painfully familiar with. If he'd had any opinions about Elliot's departure all those years ago, he'd never shared them with her. It was a testament to his loyalty, to his friendship, that he'd never done anything besides support her deep-seated anger toward Elliot. For a moment she thought he was going to say something, but before he could the moment passed.
"It just happened," she sighed.
She didn't have the heart to tell him that it was going to happen again.
***elliot***
Elliot sat at the kitchen counter, nursing a beer, his foot tapping erratically on the bar beneath him. The clock ticked on the wall behind him, reminding him that he still had several hours before he could leave.
He was nervous.
It was a new feeling for him, he knew that much. Nervousness was not a feeling he could ever remember sitting in. Flitting through his consciousness, maybe, but his ironclad will had always forced it out before he could really get to know it.
But now, here he was, that ironclad will failing him. Over the last few years, it seemed the iron had begun to melt down into something looser, something porous, that allowed in such feelings as nervousness. As doubt. As panic and fear.
But, he remembered, it had also let in love and happiness like he'd never felt.
Words would never be able to explain the feeling he'd been encountering lately. If he was being honest guilt would probably never let him put words to it. Such contentment in the aftermath of such tragedy could hardly be a mark of a good man.
He settled for allowing himself to revel in his solitude. Letting himself appreciate the independence he'd never quite felt. The freedom he'd never had to grocery shop for himself or leave dishes in the sink.
Or, he thought to himself as he looked around the room, leave boxes unpacked in the corner of the room for a month. Maureen told him he should get it over with, but he'd brushed her off, telling her he would get to it when he'd get to it. And then he'd been thrown headfirst back into the NYPD, and had barely had a moment to think since then.
Though, that could have been avoided. He wondered if maybe he'd thrown himself into work on purpose, that maybe he'd been hoping that the more he worked, the higher the chance got of him running into Olivia coincidentally, a clandestine meeting in the field, where neither of them had time to overthink a thing.
Instead, he'd spent a month putting in overtime for nothing, and ended up with a half-unpacked apartment. It was only then that he'd decided he couldn't leave it up to chance anymore. If he wanted to talk to her he was going to have to do it on purpose. Feinstein had convinced him to go to her, to ambush her on her turf, where she had control.
Feinstein hadn't realized that it had also once been Elliot's turf, and that going back there had been like going home. The shrink thought he'd been giving Olivia the upper hand, but instead, he'd just sent Hercules back to Olympus.
Between the two of them, it wasn't a fair fight. It had never been a fair fight. Nothing about whatever had been between them had ever been fair.
The way that the two of them could be so in sync and clash the way they did had always fascinated him, almost as much as she had. The way he could get inside her head, but still wonder what it was like inside her mind. The way he could anticipate her every move but never know what she was going to do.
Maybe that's what drew him to her the most. The mysterious magnetism of their relationship, the tightrope they danced across. Maybe it was fascination that kept him hooked, the simple inability to figure her out despite understanding her completely.
His phone buzzed against the concrete countertop, a reminder from the restaurant that his reservation was in an hour. He grabbed the phone and his wallet off of the counter and made his way to the front door to grab his coat.
Regardless of what kind of force had pulled him and Olivia together all those years ago, Elliot knew it was stretching thin, and he wouldn't be guaranteed much more time to get her back.
***olviia***
"Mommy! I can't find my pajamas!"
Olivia heard her son a moment before he came bursting into her closet.
"I looked everywhere!"
"Everywhere?" She asked, skeptically. "You looked everywhere?"
Noah nodded vigorously, his eyes wide, his backpack hanging limply off of his shoulder. Before she could say anything else, he turned, running out of her closet and back into his room. She looked down at the boots she was holding in her hand, and back at another pair on the shelf, before dropping them both and standing up to help Noah.
She couldn't believe it was taking her this long to find something to wear. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gone on a date, a proper date, not just drinks after work.
Confidence had never come naturally to her, but she was smart enough to know men found her attractive. She was also smart enough to know that that fact could only take her so far. After a while they realized she was only ever half in. That there was a part of her that would always be tied to her job.
That was part of why she only dated people she worked with. It wasn't necessarily on purpose but it definitely didn't hurt.
"Noah," she said, grabbing the tiny set out of a basket of clean laundry next to his closet. "Your pajamas are right here."
"No!" He yelled. She turned to him, eyebrows raised.
"Excuse me?"
"Dinosaurs," he said, crossing his arms narrowing his eyes at her. He may not have been her biological son but she was beginning to believe in nurture over nature. His stubbornness was pure Benson.
"Noah your dinosaur pajamas are in the laundry," Olivia sighed.
"Dinosaurs!" Noah yelled, throwing his backpack on the floor. Olivia took a deep breath, sitting down on the twin bed behind her.
"Well, we can't always get what we want," she started. Noah threw himself onto the ground and started crying. After a moment she slid to the ground beside him, crossing her ankles, and laid a hand gently on his back. "What's up buddy," she said softly.
After a moment Noah scooted up against his mother's leg, his face still buried in the rug.
"I don't want to go on my sleepover," he said into the shag. "I hate sleepovers."
"Baby you love sleepovers," she insisted. He shook his head, still not looking at her but wrapping his arms around her leg. "What's this really about?"
"Where are you going?" He asked. She ran her fingers through his curls.
"I'm going out to dinner," she answered. He turned his head, resting his cheek on her knee.
"With who?"
"A really old friend."
"Like Tuck?"
Olivia's heart stopped. She'd been wondering when it would come up. When she told Noah what happened he'd brushed it off, and she'd wondered how much of it he'd understood.
"We used to work together, like Tuck and I worked together," she said carefully. "But I don't know that it's quite the same."
Noah was quiet for a few minutes. Finally, he rolled over and pushed himself up, rubbing his eyes.
"Can I bring the iPad?"
She was so thankful that Noah had dropped the subject that she almost acquiesced before narrowing his eyes at him.
"I thought Mrs. Schafer had a 'no tech' policy."
Noah smirked, his little cheeks turning red.
"Ben asked if I could bring it so we could watch Dude Perfect," he whispered. Olivia rolled her eyes, standing up and tossing the pajamas she'd grabbed into his backpack.
"How about you go to Ben's tonight, and then you invite him to a sleepover next weekend and you can watch Dude Perfect here?" She asked. Noah smiled, grabbing the backpack and diving across his bed to find a stuffed animal to take with him.
Olivia left him in his room and walked back into her closet. Flicking through the modest blouses and jackets she paused, realizing this wasn't like all the other dates. This wasn't a buttoned-up, work-appropriate cocktail, this had potential.
She glanced toward the back of her closet.
It had a lot of potential.