A/N: Welcome to Defenseless. This story will be a long exploration into how Elliot and Olivia finally admit to their feelings and face the attraction between them. Things will not be simple or easy for this complex duo, but I promise there will be payoffs throughout. Lastly, a huge shout out to awildmind for beta reading this story and believing in it from the start.
Song: Pieces (Hushed) by Andrew Belle.
Defenseless
Chapter 1- Elliot
Early Spring of the Year 2000 / 5:56 a.m.
Three days had passed since his psychological exam. Five days had passed since he and Olivia had pulled the caged girl from underneath the bed. He looked at his white knuckles as they gripped on his steering wheel, and he thought about how they were the same fingers that playfully brushed the side of Olivia's face. Monique Jeffries and Olivia had been caught in fits of laughter, so the gesture slipped passed like a sleight of hand. How could they, himself included, laugh after closing a case like that? He squeezed the steering wheel harder- the same fingers that had clawed on the bed frame like life depended on them, because it did.
His hands scared him sometimes, to think of what they could do, what they could destroy if he gave in to them. He flicked on the stereo because it was too early for his thoughts. He was driving to work hours earlier than he needed to be. There was no active case. The five-day lull was causing him to grow restless. He needed that pager to ring, in the dead of night, so he didn't have to lie awake and hate himself for not being at ease. His hands touched his wife, but his eyes were occupied with unspeakable sights- occupational hazard. He wondered if she sensed how empty he was. She never indicated that she did. She just smiled into his neck like he was the same boy she first caught eyes for in lockered hallways.
He could have had breakfast with his kids, but instead he was slamming on the brakes as an early-morning jogger dashed across his intersection. All he could think was how she could be their next call. He knew better than anyone that women jogging alone before sunrise was a recipe for disaster. Maureen had signed up for cross country.
He took the final turn toward the precinct and debated why he had come. He reasoned with himself that maybe an early-morning workout would help alleviate the acid building in his muscles. He wasn't sure when a punching bag took priority over pancakes and orange juice. He told himself he was being distant with his family because of the case, because of the evaluation. He knew once he was cleared some ease would return. If he was cleared. He'd told that shrink how he thought about getting away with murder. Christ.
He wasn't sure when he started using the Lord's name in vain either. Perhaps when he told that suspect that he had been trying to break in Olivia for months. He hated himself for how he used her as a chess piece to relate to scumbags. He never intended to do it, but sometimes sexualizing her for the sake of a confession came too easily to him. He never had these problems with Alfonse. He wondered how Florida was treating his old partner: he was probably drinking orange juice spiked with vodka. Elliot smiled at the notion.
He didn't like that his mind was grouping problems and Olivia together. Olivia was not a problem. In fact, he had never worked so well with someone his entire time on the force. When Cragen first told him they were bringing on a female detective, he shifted in his shoes because he knew he would be saddled with her. Cragen wasn't going to let him be a lone ranger forever. Munch congratulated him, and he cursed himself. He and Kathy had barely survived Jo Marlowe. He prayed she would be ugly. He was a bastard.
She wasn't ugly. Every suspect, colleague, and random passerby on the street liked to remind him of that fact. It wasn't a problem though. Not like how Jo Marlowe had been a problem.
After his first day with Olivia, Kathy stood with her hip against their scratched sink and asked about his new partner.
"Is she pretty?" Kathy smiled in a soft and even tone. Her fingers were sudsy as she did the dishes from their meatloaf dinner. He hated meatloaf. The recipe had been his mother's, and he swore sometimes Kathy made it just to pick at him for working too many hours.
He shrugged as he came behind her and pressed his chest to her back. He took the scrub brush and let his fingers tangle with hers as a way of communicating his loyalty. He kissed her temple, and he could feel her smile.
"I guess that's all I need to know," Kathy said as she glanced down the hallway toward their children's bedrooms before turning to kiss him, claiming him. As their lips met, Elliot thought about how small and fragile Olivia's fingers had felt in his hand when he shook them for the first time.
"Olivia Benson, nice to meet you," she had said.
"Elliot Stabler," he had responded, and he could see the way her eyes faltered when he didn't return the nicety. Her eyes had landed on his gold band, and it was eerie the way he could see her process and internalize that fact in less than three seconds.
Nice was not the word he would use to describe having her enter his life.
1-6th Precinct Locker Room / 6:15 a.m.
Elliot entered the squad room. He noted how the lights were still off. The paired desks sat unattended. He was the first one in. Maybe Cragen was able to catch some shut eye. He wondered if one day he would end up the same as his captain- alone and battling a bottle. Elliot laughed to himself; alcoholism might be the only thing he didn't have going against him. It was his damn hands.
Then he caught himself allowing Olivia to slip into his thoughts again. He hoped to never find her alone and battling a bottle in ten years. Then he realized it was bold of him to assume he would have contact with her in ten years. Most didn't last two years in this unit, and they were already coming up on that as partners. Nevertheless, he found himself hoping that in ten years he would still be passing her coffee and seeing her face. He never wished that with Jo or with Alfonse. He tried not to ponder that for long. Alcoholism was an easier thought.
A few months into their partnership she had told him passing details about her mother, and it was around month six when she'd let the bomb of her father drop. It was at that moment that he'd understood her more than he thought he already had. She kept revealing more layers with each month, and as time kept passing, he had realized that all his assumptions about what his partnership with her would be like had been wrong. So wrong.
Olivia was not a problem. Not like Jo had been. Olivia had this morality about her that let him rest assured that the fate of his marriage was in safe and capable hands.
Olivia had capable hands. He had his doubts when he shook those frail fingers for the first time, but she quickly showed him she needed no protection from anyone. She could go toe to toe with the scum of the earth and never waver in her convictions. She was a better shot than most of the department, and she had no qualms about whipping their squad car through the busy streets of Manhattan. He was a prick for expecting anything less just because she was a woman.
Olivia was a woman. Sometimes that really tripped him up. She was a woman, and she was his partner, and it was his responsibility to make sure she wasn't injured on the job. To make sure her body met no harm.
All the mangled and abused bodies they saw everyday haunted his sleeping and waking hours. He tried not to, but he always saw his wife, his daughters. He hated that he couldn't battle off the parallels, but for years his mind would go there, and then he couldn't sleep.
Once he started working with Olivia, he began to see her. She would stand beside him and examine the crime scene photos, so close he could smell her minty shampoo and feel the brush of her oversized suits. He could see the way her lip would quiver just a fraction, and it was almost as if he could feel her stomach flip. He knew she saw herself too.
That was one of the things he had never expected, how protective he would become and how quickly it happened. Jo Marlowe had been his only other female partner and he was a uniform back then. He didn't work Special Victims when he'd been partnered with her. He had never been protective of Jo. Jo was his senior; she broke him in. She would pat his shoulder and say have another drink after a long day of patrol.
Olivia would give him a forlorn look and say, in almost a whisper, go see your kids. God, he was thankful for that, so thankful that she was everything Jo wasn't. Olivia wasn't a problem.
That was the other thing he never expected, that Olivia would be protective of him. Protective of his mental wellbeing, protective of his rage, protective of his marriage. He saw the way her eyes would shine when he talked about soccer games and holiday plans. At first it confused him because Marlowe had no interest in hearing about what his kids were getting for Christmas, but Olivia wanted to know.
He realized- as she sat in that passenger seat and choked back tears after looking at the man leaning from that window, the man that could have raped her mother, her mother who was a stumbling-down drunk- that Olivia's eyes shone with curiosity because she had never known a father who would sit on the bleachers and cheer her on at soccer or a mother who would wrap her presents for Christmas morning. When he made the realization it shattered his heart. He wanted to give her all those things she never had. It was a strange compulsion, and he realized that the need to show her what was right burned deeply inside him. He wanted to show her what a good father looked like, a good family man. How fucked up was that? He never expected that.
He swallowed the thought as he dumped his keys on his desk. His eyes hitched on the framed photo of Olivia and her mother that sat on her desk across from him. It was facing him. He wondered if, while she was working on paperwork late last night, she couldn't stomach to look at the photo any longer. She must have forgotten to flip it back around. Now, it was staring at him like a challenge. Elliot knew that framing that photo and placing it on her desk like they had a loving mother-daughter bond must have killed her a little bit inside. He looked at the green-eyed, light-complexioned woman, and it made his stomach uneasy when he realized Olivia's sullen brown eyes and silky dark hair had come from the darkness that drove her mother to every drunken rage. He kept having these realizations about Olivia, kept thinking about her, and he kept chalking it up to being a concerned partner, a curious partner- just like she was curious about what Lizzie had wanted for Christmas.
Serena Benson triggered some sort of anger in him. He reached for the frame and firmly turned it around. He hadn't met the woman, even after almost two years of working with her daughter, but he disliked what he knew about her. She didn't protect Olivia. Olivia had told him she dated a man twice her age when she was merely sixteen. When the tidbit hit his ears, his jaw clenched, and he balled up his fists. His daughter was sixteen, and he would kill a man before he'd let her get engaged to someone who could be her father. The thought of a young Olivia dating, sleeping with a man, whose only intention was to take advantage of her, made him want to throw chairs. Serena Benson could burn in hell, and he meant that from the bottom of his Catholic heart.
He sucked in a breath and realized he'd let his thoughts go astray, again. He needed a bench press. He pounded up the stairs that led to the locker room and briefly wondered what time Olivia would come in. Had she been sleeping these last five nights? Was she worried about her psych eval? He wondered what she had told that woman about how she copes with the stress of their job. He told that psychiatrist that he goes home and hugs his kids and kisses his wife. Another realization hit him: Olivia went home to no one.
Elliot opened the locker room door, and his stomach jumped to his throat when he realized he wasn't the only one at the precinct this early. Before him stood his partner. Her back was to him. Her naked back. Droplets of water raced down the expanse of her spine and dipped into the dimples on either side. Her shoulder blades were pushed back, and the water from her freshly-washed hair was cascading over her bronzed skin. So much skin.
She didn't seem to have heard him enter. She was looking down, and she was messing with the minute hand on her wristwatch as she adjusted it to her bare body. She hadn't expected anyone to come in at this hour. She must have been letting her skin dry under the noisy vents in the locker room.
He knew he should turn around and run for the nearest church and pour holy water over his entire body, but instead he stood there like a damned fool. His eyes kept sweeping over her backside like he was trying to memorize every inch of her exposed skin.
She looked so vulnerable. Too vulnerable. Part of him felt this moral obligation to protect her modesty- like the beads of his rosary should shroud her tempting body.
Then another realization hit him. He had walked around Olivia like she was dead. Suppressing and ignoring every indication and implication that she was, in fact, a desirable woman. He had to keep that line taut, for both their sakes, and the line was easier to keep clear when he denied that her body was capable of anything other than doing their job. Her body was his to protect. Never to touch. But this was too much. He'd successfully spent two years training his mind to see her as his partner, his equal, the person who would take a bullet for him.
But now he was haunted. The thought of a bullet ripping through that perfect skin made him feel sick. She had proven herself as his equal, but in that moment, he couldn't see her as anything other than a woman- a fact he thought he could deny until his dying day.
He needed to turn around and retrain his brain, but instead his throat betrayed him.
"Turn around," he ordered: the words slipped past his mouth like he was living in an alternate timeline. Jesus Christ. What was he thinking? If that wasn't crossing a line, he didn't know what was. He didn't cross lines like that; Olivia didn't cross lines like that. Saint Olivia. She wore oversized suits and reminded him day in and day out about his family. Good Lord, Jo Marlowe had ruined him from righteousness, but with any prayer Olivia would return him to it. No, she'd probably tell him to go straight to hell and add him to the list of men who had failed her.
He'd been pushing boundaries for months, and he knew it. Richard White. He'd shown up at her apartment without invitation, walked in like he owned the place, and drank from her orange juice like he kissed her mouth all the time. Orange juice. Maybe that's why he had no interest in drinking it with his kids anymore. Dammit.
She turned at his command, and his stomach flipped. She was facing him now, and he was sure he had forgotten how to breathe.
He took in her face first. The way she looked completely taken off guard. He'd never seen her without composure before. I'd like your balls in a blender, but ain't life a bitch. She always knew what to say, but in that moment, she was rendered speechless, and he was a dirty bastard.
"Elliot." she almost squeaked. Squeaked- the sound would never leave his ears. If she'd had her gun on her hip, she would shoot him dead, right through the skull, and as she did it, she would think of his children, his wife. God, he deserved that, but her gun was nowhere in sight. Instead, the curves of her hips were in the direct line of his eyes. He found his eyes dipping to the apex of her legs.
She was all woman. The line of manicured dark curls trailed to her opening, and...and his mind went there: he plunged right into the hell he'd been warding off. He wanted to know what it would be like to spread those long, firm legs open and find out just what it would take to make her lose composure for good. Brian Cassidy knew. Brian fucking Cassidy.
Then his eyes trailed from the tops of her thighs, up her abdomen until they landed fully on her breasts. He was drinking her in, and there was no way to deny it. She was either too shocked to cover herself, or she was welcoming him to hell. He knew she was too good for the latter. He was just a bastard preying on her vulnerability, no better than the man who was twice her age when she was sixteen.
Her nipples were the same shade of brown as her eyes, and the fact startled him: she was dark all over. They were pebbled from the vents pushing cold air down on her damp skin, and he realized that would be the same way they would look if she was aroused.
Olivia Benson, detective third grade, could handle a gun and an interrogation. She had a body strong enough to pry open a caged woman hidden under a bed, restrain grown men, and climb the rock wall in the department recreation center. Those were the only ways he should be allowed to consider her body, not how her nipples would tighten when she was aroused.
He was going to hell.
"What are you..." She began, and he noticed how her pulse strained against her throat, how her collarbones glistened with moisture. Then another realization hit him: this was the first time he had considered her body outside of crime scene photos. Her bruised neck and broken clavicle plagued his sleepless nights, but now he could see in plain sight that she was untouched, unharmed, just standing before him in all of her beauty. She was beautiful. Beautiful and defenseless, and he knew he would never sleep again but for entirely different reasons.
She was not a victim; she was his partner, and she was a woman. And he'd just told her to turn around. Fuck.
"Jesus, I'm sorry," he exhaled as he ran a hand down his sinning eyes. "I didn't expect you to be here this early," he spat out like a child being caught red handed, and then because he couldn't help himself: he removed his hand from his eyes and looked again. She'd always had more control than he did: she had grabbed a bunched-up t-shirt and was holding it in front of herself like a shield. He could still see the triangle between her legs which made him twitch. He stepped closer to her, and that was when he knew for sure that he'd lost all rationality.
You can look, but you can't touch. He told himself, like he was talking to one of his children at the Bronx Zoo. You shouldn't even be looking, you bastard, the better part of his brain reminded him.
"I couldn't sleep," she mumbled as she pressed her eyes shut. He took another step toward her.
"Elliot, you need to leave," she said in the tone she took with their suspects. It made him halt in place. Thank God Olivia had a moral compass because his had surely broken, shattered to a million fucking pieces.
"Right," he cleared his throat as he flicked his eyes to her one last time. Her eyes had that horrible glossed-over look that she got when she was a million miles away.
"I'll go make us some coffee," he offered as some pathetic peace offering for whatever unrepairable damage he had just caused. Turn Around.
"You do that," she said through tight lips and sad eyes.
Sad eyes. He'd caused her eyes to be sad. The same sadness she wore to work after having dinner with her mother the night before. He wanted to wrap her into a hug and whisper apologies against her neck.
He knew he couldn't do that; he knew she would never let him. He belonged in hell, right next to Serena fucking Benson for being another fuck up in Olivia's life.