So here we are, onto part 12, and it's all Elliot and Olivia this time. Sorry, Bensidy folks- but they'll be returning in the next installment. This part starts right where part 11 left off outside Munch's retirement party in Wonderland Story and goes from there (but obviously deviates from canon).

As always, comments make my heart happy. :) And a HUGE thank you to paperframes, who held my hand through this entire thing. Without her, I would probably still be staring at a blank screen and flailing wildly.

All the same warnings still apply. Title and quotes from ten days by Missy Higgins.

you won't talk me into it this time
if I'm going away, your heart's coming too

"So, just to be clear...that wasn't Samantha that called," Nick says, looking back at your phone in confusion as you type out a quick reply: «give me a minute here».

"No. No Samantha," you assure him. "This is, ah. Personal. That's why I need you to go back in there and cover for me. Say she wouldn't talk if you were there, or- make something up, I don't care what as long as it's believable."

"Liv, what's going on?" he asks, immediately concerned.

"It's nothing. I'm okay, I'm not in danger and I'm not going to do anything stupid, I promise you. Just something I need to take care of. Oh, and you should probably text me so I know what I'm supposedly doing."

Nick's eyes suddenly go wide. "Are you...is this a booty call?"

"Christ, no." You let out a sharp laugh. "There's no sex to be had, believe me. Look, I'll fill you in tomorrow if you just do me this one little favor."

"Yeah, of course, I'm on it," he says, looking relieved not to be a party to some illicit affair.

"Thank you, thank God for you." As you're about to walk away, he calls for you to wait. Elliot, who is still standing on the corner, looks irritated when you turn back around.

"I assume I'm supposed to tell Mr. Benson you'll see him at home?" Nick asks, and you roll your eyes at the nickname and nod. "And I should say you're very busy and so you probably won't be able to answer if he calls."

"You are so good at this." Once again you turn to leave and once again he stops you.

"Hey. Just. Whatever it is you're doing- if you need something, you call me, okay? No questions asked and I'll never tell a soul. I mean it."

You clasp one of his hands between yours and give it a squeeze of thanks. "You're a good guy, Nick. You really are."

By the time you reach Elliot, he has clearly ran out of any patience he might once have had. "What the hell's with Junior?"

"Nick is covering for my ass so I can sneak off with you here. You should be appreciative."

"Eh, I still don't know if I like him."

"Well, that's fine, because no one's asking if you do or not," you say, walking alongside him. "Where are we even going?"

"There's a hotel on the next block and they have a good bar. I'll buy you a drink."

"Oh, you'll buy me way more than one. We could've just talked back at the party, you know, it would have been much simpler."

"I had enough party time already and trust me, you don't want me around that idiot boyfriend of yours." He had a very valid point there.

The bar you ended up in is nothing terribly special, but it's uncrowded and it has alcohol, which is all you really need. You sit down at a table in the far corner of the room and Elliot asks what you want.

"Bottle of Everclear."

He returns with a couple of beers, apparently not realizing that you weren't fucking around, that you knew you would need to be highly intoxicated to handle this conversation. You had gotten off to a good start at the restaurant, and you didn't want to overdo it to where you had lost all of your verbal filter, but you needed to be just drunk enough to keep yourself from sprinting out the door. "You look good."

"Mmm," you hum, because that's not what he dragged you over here to say. Not that you're completely unappreciative- after all, deciding what to wear had been a long and intense process. It was the first time you'd been brave enough to wear something sleeveless outside of your apartment, and it had taken a fair amount of coverup but you were quite pleased with the end result. You couldn't remember the last time you saw your reflection in the mirror and actually smiled like that.

"No, I'm serious. You do. I haven't seen you look like this since-" It was the mark of a married man, knowing not to attempt finishing that sentence. "You look good."

"El, just tell me what you want," you say, not unkindly.

"I'm not sorry about what I told you the other day."

"Wow, this is starting out well."

He takes a drink and gives you the look he probably gives his kids when they're being smartasses. "You needed to know. And maybe the timing was off, but I didn't really have a choice but to do it now. I don't have a time machine to go back a few years and tell you then."

"That wasn't your only choice. You're not required to broadcast every thought that goes through your head."

"It's not going to go away just because I don't say anything. I'm trying to be honest with you here, Liv."

"And your honesty does nothing but complicate my life, even more than it already is," you point out.

"I said you deserved better, and that I wish I would have done things differently. How is that complicating your life?"

"What is it that you want me to say? What are you trying to accomplish? You're so into honesty, why don't you tell me that and then you can leave me alone?"

"You act like you can't stand me and we both know that's a lie. You like thinking someone's chasing you because you want the attention, and you like being a bitch and playing hard to get because to you it's payback."

"I want the attention. Right," you say with disdain. "Don't flatter yourself."

He says nothing and his eyes never leave yours as he sits there with a smirk on his face, acting like he knows something you don't.

"In case you forgot, El, I have someone else now. I'm not sitting around waiting for you all alone."

"How could I forget the love of your life?"

"Could you maybe, just for once..." You change your mind mid-sentence, deciding it was a waste of oxygen to make any sort of polite request to him. "He's good to me."

Elliot laughs like he's hit the jackpot. "Do you notice that you say that every single time you mention him?"

"Why shouldn't I? It's the truth."

"Because I've never once heard you say how you feel about him. Nothing."

"Maybe I just don't think that's something I want to share," you say. "Whether I love him, whether I hate him and I'm only sticking around because the sex is amazing, it really doesn't affect you."

"Oh, I bet it's amazing."

"For someone who was so desperate to talk to me that they had to resort to stalking, you're contributing very little to this conversation."

"Stalking. This from the woman who called me about 40 times a day for months," he said, clearly satisfied with himself for this retort. "And they say irony is dead."

"You know what I think is ironic? That someone who's supposedly so happily married spends so much time chasing me, as you put it."

"Oh for chrissakes, is that really what you think? That I'm trying to fuck you? Talk about flattering yourself."

You slam your drink down on the table in aggravation and are pleased when he looks startled. "Enough. You want honesty? Really? Because I'm ready to move past the bullshit, so this could be your lucky day."

"Lay it on me. Let's hear it." You shake your head, holding up the now-empty bottle until he catches on and goes over to the bar to get you another.

While you wait, you shred a napkin into tiny pieces and think about an exchange you overheard years ago, a uni sidling up to Fin and Munch and asking 'So what's the deal with Benson and Stabler? Are they...?' only to be answered with a laugh and a 'those two? No way. They'd never get further than arguing about who gets to be on top.'

Without having any experience to base it on, it sounded like a plausible scenario. That's what the two of you were best at, overcomplication and self-sabotage, and in the end you were just too goddamn alike to ever come to any workable compromises.

You're confident you're doing the right thing...you think. But it feels like an ending, because it is, and the true irony of the whole situation is that this is what you wanted when you thought you were dying, a chance to sit across a table from him and drink shitty beer one last time. You got your wish, but you didn't think it would be like this and you didn't think it would be so fucking hard to look him directly in the eyes and say "I can't see you anymore."

"You've been a tremendous support for me this summer, really, and I'm so grateful for that. But it's time for me to start moving on and that includes...I can't be friends with you, El. I mean, look at this," but you can't, you literally can't look at him anymore, so you duck your head and stare off to the side and tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear. "We don't know how to do this whole friendship thing without it getting complicated, and that worked out okay when we were partners...but now we don't have that to fall back on. And we obviously aren't good at being friends, and that's all we ever could be. We're never going to be anything more so we just need to end this while we still can."

It seems to you like you did a pretty good job of laying it all out for him. He apparently disagrees. "I don't get what this is about."

"I just explained it to you. We can't be friends. What about that do you not get?"

"Everything. I don't accept that."

"And I didn't say it was a choice." You look to your left, then your right, as if you're searching for an imaginary audience to confirm how unreasonable he's being. "You wanted honesty, and there you go. I was honest."

"So that's it, you decide we 'can't be friends', the end. That's your problem right there, you know. You don't give people a chance."

"I gave you a chance, and look where that got me!"

"Where? Where exactly did it get you?"

Through the window you can see people hurrying past, going one direction or the other, eventually disappearing from view. That is precisely what you need, to sever the ties that have been keeping you stuck and go forward to whatever unseen future awaits.

You still don't look at him, as if that will keep him from noticing that you've started to cry silently, and this is the part where you usually run away. But this is your last chance, and you owe it to yourself to put it all out there so that you can move on unencumbered. So you tell him about the years you spent with your life on some sort of extended pause, how he was everything you had and along the way you created something in your mind that wasn't there. How you kept thinking you just needed to hold out a little while longer and how you read into everything exactly what you wanted to in order to keep the charade going.

"And you think that I-"

"I don't think anything about you," and you draw yourself up in your chair as the mask falls back into place. "That's what I'm trying to get at here. I realized it wasn't a matter of waiting. You, we...there had been more than enough chances. For fuck's sake, how long were you and Kathy separated? It wasn't going to happen but it took me all this time to figure that out, and now that I have-"

"Liv-"

"Now that I have," you repeat, ignoring him, "I think you can see why I say I can't go through the same fucking thing over again. And that's what will happen. So don't tell me I never gave you, this, us a chance."

He tells you to stop, but you are already headed out the door and you can't think, can't breathe. You lean against the wall of the lobby because you don't trust your legs to support you and tilt your head back, looking up at the ceiling to stave off the fresh tears that are threatening to fall. Goddamn him.

You can predict almost to the second exactly when he'll come up behind you, clearing his throat like you might not notice him there otherwise. "Liv. I don't know why you think I would do-"

"You didn't do anything. That's the point, this is all on me," you say, and he must be loving how you've absolved him of all responsibility, probably for the first time ever, "and you know what the stupidest thing is? If someone were to give me the chance to go back and relive it all, even knowing how it would end, I would do it. No hesitation. Because...you were the only best friend I ever had. I guess that made everything worth it somehow."

The lobby is crowded with people engrossed in their conversations and elevators dinging and the phone on the concierge's desk is ringing and ringing with no one to answer it. Elliot reaches out and touches the small of your back gently, recognizing the rising panic on your face. "Hey. Let's go somewhere quieter."

"I'm not getting a room with you," you joke weakly, voice still shaking every bit as much as the rest of you. When you duck into an empty stairwell at the back of the building, the smell of chlorine hanging in the air from the pool on the other side of the wall, you sit down on one of the cold concrete steps and put your head in your hands so you don't have to look at him.

Everything falls silent except for the sound of his footsteps pacing back and forth on the landing. You recognize the rhythm without even trying, remember how the tempo would gradually become quicker until it came to an abrupt halt. His feet stop moving and you wait for him to either blurt something out or put his fist through a door. "I still can't let you just walk away," he says in the regretful tone of someone who regrets absolutely nothing.

"Elliot."

"No. Listen. You're gonna want to hear this, because you might never get to again. I was wrong," he said, over-enunciating each of the last three words to make sure you understood the gravity of this admission. He was right, you probably never would hear that from him again, and you half expected the sky to part and a choir of angels to sing in honor of such a once in a lifetime occasion. "I let you go too easily before. I should've gone after you, and I didn't. It's like you said- it wasn't that I didn't have plenty of chances, shit."

"So why didn't you?"

"Probably the same reason why you never told me any of this until today."

"Because I'm closed off and emotionally stunted?"

"Your words, not mine," he says amicably, sitting down next to you.

"Jerk."

"So I've heard."

"I meant what I said, you know. We have no idea how to be friends with each other." You finally lift your head up, although you're still not ready to actually look him in the face.

"And fifteen years ago we had no idea how to be partners, but we managed to figure something out, right? I think that's the only way to ever learn- fucking up again and again."

"We got pretty good at that part," you agree. "If there was a way to fuck up, I think we found it."

Everything goes quiet save for the muffled tones of faraway voices. You think of all the time you've spent together this summer, laughing and arguing with each other over coffee or Blue Moon or phone calls that last for hours. You think about watching the sun rise at your old apartment and holding hands and falling asleep with your head in his lap, about how he won't let you give up on therapy even after you've insisted that you're a hopeless case, about that day where he listened to you throw up all afternoon until Brian came back because he wasn't going to let you be home sick all alone.

"So what do I have to do to keep you from running out on me again?" he asks, and he gives you this slight smile even though his voice is gravelly and rough.

"That's a dangerous question you're asking there. I thought you would know better than that."

"What can I say, I'm a risk taker."

You can hear Nick's voice telling you to 'make him work for it', just like he did during that ridiculous incident with Brian and the hooker a few weeks ago. There's a part of you, the part that still feels rejected and abandoned, that wants to be unnecessarily vindictive simply to prove to Elliot that you are not to be fucked with. But there is also another part of you, the one that saw him from across the room at Munch's party and instinctively started moving in his direction. The same one that prematurely ended your new career in Computer Crimes and brought you back from Oregon when you had flirted with the idea of starting over among the greenery and vast open spaces of the west coast.

"You have got to stop fucking with my head," you ultimately settle on telling him. "I'm serious about this. All the what ifs and should've beens, I can't. It's crazy-making to get stuck on thinking about what might have happened but didn't because...this is it. This is all we're ever going to have, and we can be friends but it ends there. So I have to know that you understand, that we're on the same page, because I can't be constantly wondering if you have some sort of ulterior motive."

"This is it," he repeats, and his voice is heavy with the same regret that you can feel weighing on your heart, tugging at you a little more with every breath.

"Yeah. I. I don't like it either," you admit softly. "But it's all we have."

"Can I just say one more thing?"

He wouldn't be Elliot if he didn't insist on having the final word. "Knock yourself out."

"This'll be the last I ever say about this," and you are a bit wary of any sentence that starts out like that, "and you can believe me about it or not, it's up to you. But whatever chances I had that I didn't take...it was never, ever a matter of not wanting you. Ever."

"Goddamn it," you complain tearfully because you are crying now, really crying in the way that he has only seen you do a handful of times, and you are far past the point of being able to keep yourself under control.

He starts to say something, hesitates, and then tries again. "Can I..." he asks, holding one arm out.

You nod and make some sort of sniffling noise that is supposed to be a yes, leaning against him and burying your face in the crook of his neck as he pulls you closer. Forget crying, you really are not the hugging sort of people, but you have one hand clutching the back of his shirt and he's stroking your hair and this is what you've been wanting the chance to do ever since the day you found out he put in his papers. You're momentarily disappointed when he pulls back slightly because you weren't ready for him to let go, not even a little bit. But then somehow you're kissing, and it's not this dramatic passionate moment but it's not a quick peck either, and he tastes like you always thought he should and you think you are getting a little lightheaded from the chlorine fumes in the air and your noses brush together when you finally separate.

Now you're holding onto each other again, just this quiet embrace. You gradually manage to get your breathing under control, only the occasional shudder breaking the silence, and you smile with your face ducked against his shoulder as his hand rubs your back in little circles. "I didn't tell you my other condition yet, El."

"What is it?"

"No more Brian jokes."

"I can't promise something like that and you know it."

You sigh as you finally let go of him, but not before giving him an elbow to the ribs. "You could try. Try really hard."

"Oh c'mon, you know most of what I say is true. Don't think that I can't see when you're trying not to laugh."

"You're an ass."

"Ah, now there's the Olivia I've missed," he says, looking at you carefully. "So things have been...okay these past few weeks?"

You tell him they've been fine, and he replies that he wouldn't have expected anything else. "Work, though...oh God. You will not believe all the shit I have to tell you, but-"

Your voice trails off as you see him looking downward at the pink spots on the inside of your upper arm, fingers hovering over the skin but not touching. You realize he probably hasn't noticed them before, not with how you've usually stuck to elbow length sleeves even at the height of summer, and you haven't exactly been offering to show them off.

"Yeah," you finally say in little more than a whisper. "They're. Getting better."

"So are you."

You laugh quietly, shaking your head, and you want to pull away from him but there's something inside that just won't let you. "You're only saying that because you don't have to live with me."

"I'm not," he says, and it makes you wonder about how things could have been different, about what would have happened if he had been the one taking you home from the hospital and the one you woke up next to every day. If you would still have the same fears and fight the same fights that you have with Brian.

It's impossible to really imagine what it would be like, you suppose, when Elliot barely knows any more about what happened than what he might have picked up from the papers or from simply looking at you. He's your one refuge, the one part of your life that you've largely managed to keep untouched when everything else was irrevocably altered. «You don't get to talk about him». "It's like- when you're around...it's the only time I actually feel like I can forget. Not think about it, about him, for a while."

He seems to understand what you're saying, the implied apologies and silent plea for patience, the promise that someday you'll tell him all the things that you can't put into words right now.

His arm goes back around your shoulders. "I meant it when I said you looked good, you know."

"I'm sure you did," you say with a smirk as you lean back against him.

"I did. I hope that idiot realizes that he's fucking way above his station."

"What did I just tell you?!"

"You said no jokes. This was an observation," he points out, and you try to look irritated even as you are biting back a smile. "So I, uh. Are we still on for Tuesday?"

"Is that your way of discreetly asking if you're ever going to see me again?"

"Well. Given your history..."

"My history, hmm?" You suppose you can't blame him for being unsure, not when your usual coping strategy for dealing with any sort of uncomfortable situation is to freak out and run (or vice versa, sometimes you mix it up a little). "I'll be there, swear to God. I'll even call you between now and then so you know I haven't fled the country."

"You do, and I'm coming after you."

"And you say you're not a stalker."

You glance down at your watch and he frowns. "Is the id- is he going to be wondering where you are?"

"Yeah, probably soon," you say, certain Elliot doesn't realize how he's holding onto you a little tighter. You can feel his heartbeat in between your shoulder blades, and you are sitting on cold hard concrete and everything smells like chlorine but you can't think of anywhere else you'd rather be. "But now...I'm okay for now."

time has changed nothing at all
you're still the only one that feels like home