prompt: date.
rating: g/t.
There are certain things you get used to over the years, Olivia thinks. Not the cases, because something's really gotta be wrong for you to accept dead kids and sexual assault as normal, but the side-effects of the job. A ruined date is nothing new. She isn't surprised; she isn't even sure she can say she's upset.
She stands on the curb of a busy street and pulls Elliot's police-issue windbreaker tighter around her shoulders. It smells like him, she thinks, her nose buried into the collar, eyes squinting against the early-winter wind as she watches her partner say goodbye to her date.
"Sorry for stealing her," Elliot says, hand extended.
His mouth is twisted in that smarmy smile of his, the one he usually keeps locked up for undercover work. It's fake. She knows it's fake. She's pretty sure her date can tell it's fake, too, but he smiles back and shakes the offered hand anyway, and really, Olivia thinks, she doesn't know what she'd been expecting. Derek's a nice guy. Of course he smiles back.
She shifts where she stands and adjusts the skirt of her dress, lips twitching when he catches her eye. "I really am sorry," she says, at the same time Elliot says, "It was nice meeting you, David," and God, Olivia thinks. Way to be fucking subtle.
Derek corrects him but looks between them as he does it, forehead lightly furrowed, mouth downturned, and that. That is a look Olivia knows well.
It doesn't take a genius to realise he's not going to call her again.
She turns to the Sedan only once Derek has disappeared around the corner. Elliot's right beside her, hand pressed to the small of her back under the guise of assistance, his other one reaching to open her door, but Olivia makes a point of ignoring his help for no other reason than that she feels like being spiteful.
"Ass," she grumbles, half-hearted, and hates the way her mouth twitches at his laugh.