Prompt #74: "First Cassidy then Ed Tucker? Jeez, Liv, what happened to you?" "You have no right to question my choices for the men who loved me and I loved back." "Loved?" Elliot laughed. "Get out!" Elliot finds out about Olivia's past loves they fight and she kicks him out, but there's a blizzard outside.
The Years Between Us
~oOo~
It had been over a year, over a year since he had told her as he poured a shitty cup of coffee that he wanted to know, about her, about the time he'd missed, about what had happened to her. It had been a year and until a few weeks ago during the abyss of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas and they had never discussed it. They hadn't discussed it when he had shown up at the precinct rambling about fighting with Ayanna and a woman from Italy and how he didn't want to waste any more time. Time was valuable, it was fleeting…he had wasted too much time to keep pretending he didn't love her.
That was it.
That was how it had tumbled out of him for the second time that he loved her. That Elliot Joseph Stabler loved Olivia Margaret Benson.
She had stared at him. Blinked for a moment and suggested he close the door. He did. He followed her instruction and closed the door, leaning back while the knob dug into his back.
"You can't just go around telling me you love me," Olivia told him. She stood up slowly, dropping her readers on her desk and exhaling. He was worried, she could tell. So she smiled. She smiled at him as if to say that this was all going to work out alright.
"I do," he told her firmly. He'd adjusted his hands behind his back so the knob wasn't digging in too far, but he had no idea what to do with his hands. He was sure he had never been this nervous in his life. This was it. He loved her. "I love you." She stopped in front of him. A few inches between them. Too close if someone were to walk in (but they wouldn't, the precinct had basically been empty when he walked in), and too far for Elliot's liking because he just wanted to hold her. "I know we've gotta talk. There's lots to talk about," including a discussion about the woman who had sent him spinning and ultimately maybe gave him the shove he needed to go and talk to Olivia. Or maybe that shove was actually a shouting match with Ayanna Bell in her office when he was once again reminded that no matter how close he got to the people he worked with, no matter how much he cared for them…it would never compare to how he cared about her, it would never compare to the security he had knowing that he would always have Olivia's back and she would have his, even when he didn't deserve it. "Me, you…Italy…"
"El," Olivia whispered. She put her index finger on his lip and shushed him like she would when Noah was a baby, "I love you too."
And so it had started. It had started that day in the precinct, Olivia thought it was a fitting way for things to kick off between them officially. She had kissed him and Elliot had frozen. He had frozen for a moment until a shit-eating grin came over his face and he had kissed her back. As quickly as it had started they stopped. Not because they didn't want to do more, but because if they continued, Elliot was going to take her on the desk and while he wanted her, he had wanted her for decades, he was not going to rush it.
So he didn't. He told her instead in a breathless whisper that he wanted to take her to dinner and she had agreed. He picked her up the following night, she explained that Noah was with a friend but he would be home later, her point was clear. This was a date and it wasn't going any further. Not yet at least.
It had only taken another week or so for the pair to stumble into bed. This time Noah was having a sleepover with Amanda and Sonny, of course, Olivia knew what the two were up to. She knew exactly why they had invited her son over. So when Elliot showed up with a charcuterie board and a bottle of wine, she had grabbed him by the collar and kissed him. Their first night together had been okay, it had been good, but…he didn't know her that way and she didn't know him. It had steadily gotten better, he had learned all of the places to suck and to lick and she had memorized the planes of his body. So what had started as fine had gotten so much better and that is what Olivia was hoping for. A night of sex and laughing and sitting in bed wrapped up in each other just being.
"I wanna know," he told her, repeating those words from a year prior. So much had changed and so much hadn't, "I mean…I know some," she had told him bits and pieces about Lewis. There was no world in which she had wanted to put it all out there at once. So she had given crumbs, discussions about how she became a Captain, how things had been after Don had left…little bits spilled out until Elliot had been able to put together the details over the course of the last few months, but her personal life? Did Noah have a father? Had Olivia been married? All of that was on the tip of his tongue so many moments but he couldn't bring himself to ask her…until now. "I heard someone said you and Cassidy got back together?"
Olivia laughed, she had always known Elliot was a jealous son of a bitch, but she realized as she saw his nostrils flare ever so slightly that he was still jealous of the man he had been jealous of back when she first started in the unit. "We were," she nodded. "We reconnected on a case, he and I were together when William Lewis happened."
Olivia didn't have time to continue, she didn't have time to tell him about the pregnancy scare or the end of the relationship, Elliot spoke next, his eyes full of pain and his voice caught in his throat. "You were with him? He didn't know? Didn't notice that you were gone?" Elliot hadn't meant for it to be an accusation at her but he knew that was how it had come out. "Swear to god Liv, I would've been there…"
He was wringing his hands in his lap and Olivia reached over to stop him, he would spend the rest of his life beating himself up over this and maybe there was a time that she wanted him to feel that pain, that remorse, but that was over now. "Brian and I were…safe. We were familiar. He made a mistake, he was in a complicated spot…I don't blame him." She looked at him, slowly bringing Elliot's hands to her lips, "I don't blame you. The only person who has any responsibility for what William Lewis did is William Lewis."
Elliot shook his head. He mumbled something about how she was making excuses and he wasn't sure if he was talking about her making excuses for him or for Brian Cassidy. God he would punch that guy if he had the chance, although he was fairly certain Cassidy would say the same about him. "Why'd you break up?"
"I thought I was pregnant," she admitted, "realized I wanted kids…more than whatever it was Bri and I were doing."
"Bri," Elliot chuckled under his breath. He couldn't remember the guy as being much more than a green detective who was always a couple steps behind, always so out of sync with the rest of the squad…he could hardly imagine Olivia sharing her life with him. "Not Noah's dad then?"
Olivia shook her head. How could she possibly tell this man that the closest thing Noah had ever had to a father was a blink of an eye with Ed Tucker during his toddler years. How could she tell Elliot that Trevor Langan had been the man who helped her adopt the little boy or that Uncle Rafa read bedtime stories to Noah. Would she tell him about Peter playing ball with the boy? Or Uncle Fin being front and center at every dance recital he could make it to? She wasn't sure which of these realities would hurt Elliot the least, she supposed that would be Fin because no matter what world, the then or the now, Fin was always going to be in her corner. She knew though that what came next would hurt him the most.
Ed Tucker.
Ed Tucker had loved her son.
Ed Tucker had loved her.
Olivia loved Ed Tucker.
"Noah is adopted," she told him with a smile. "I found him on a case. He was this tiny little baby in a drawer."
"A drawer?" Elliot's stomach dropped as he thought of all the cases they had seen with kids. He couldn't imagine for a second that Noah could have been one of those kids. "Jesus, Liv."
Olivia let out a shallow breath. "Drink?" She asked, rubbing her palms against her thighs. Elliot nodded and Olivia walked to the kitchen and refilled their wine. They needed it…she needed it. But then as she re-filled the glass her mind was once again filled with Ed. She could hear him asking her if she was alright. Asking what he could do to making things easier for her in that moment. It was laughable because the only things he could've done differently would be to have never entered her orbit, or to have never fucking left it. The reality of their situation seemed nothing short of unfair. She returned a moment later with the wine, crossing one leg under the other as she looked at Elliot. "I never understood what people meant when they said it took a village. You know?" She didn't wait for a response, she needed to get through it. "So with Noah, I've had a village. My partner after you left, Nick…he was so good to me, he had a daughter…and Rollins…we all just came together and figured it out. Barba loves Noah so much. Uncle Rafa." Olivia smiled. "I swear he gets Noah a new book every time he sees him, which is better than when he was getting him a new LEGO set because that was a painful endeavor for my feet. We had an ADA for a while, Peter…taught him how to play ball. Fin never misses a dance recital….we've just…El we created this little family."
"You built an amazing family, Liv." Elliot was never not in awe of all she had done in his absence. He had known she would survive, but even through all of the pain and heartbreak, through all of the things he shouldn't have missed…Olivia had somehow managed to thrive. He wasn't stupid enough to say that she had blossomed because he left, maybe in spite of his leaving, but he wouldn't open up that can of worms until she did. "Did I know him?" Elliot asked. Instantly he had cut through all of the bullshit, all of the pleasantries around the one Olivia had mentioned a year prior. "Ed?" He had racked his brain after she didn't show for Christmas, trying to think of just who Ed could have been. There was only one man he could think of and it was arguably the only man he didn't want to think could be it. "Jesus, Liv." He could see the way her brown orbs were avoiding making contact with him and that was when he knew for sure. Before he had just suspected it, but now he knew. "I'm not gonna believe it unless you say it." Was he really doing this? His jaw straightened and his entire body stiffened from the comfortable position he had been in just a few seconds earlier. "Of all the people Olivia, of all of the men in this city. He arrested you."
"He was doing his job." She hated how well he could read her. She hated how Elliot just fucking knew. He had probably given it a bit of thought last year in the chaos of Eli, but now staring at her, she knew he would just be able to see right through her. "He was here," she told him. "Through everything." Of course, he knew what she meant. Tucker was there for Lewis and he wasn't. "Ed understood a part of me that no one else did."
"So let me get this straight," Elliot bristled. "I left, and you got back together with Brian fucking Cassidy and when that didn't work out you jumped into bed with Ed Tucker? That man came for my job, Olivia! He was part of the reason that I had to leave. He drove me off the fucking force and then…then what…he got the prize? He got the girl? God, he must've fuckin' loved that. He must've loved knowing that he had taken everything from me. Every god damned thing. My badge. My partner."
"And you had your wife!" Olivia shouted back. "You left, Elliot. You went back to a warm body and a warm bed. You ran off to Italy without so much as a second thought. You didn't want to jump through hoops to keep your badge. That's fine. But do not try to tell me that Ed Tucker made you walk away from me for the better part of a decade because I am certain that keeping your pension didn't have a clause that included never speaking to me again." She didn't wait for him to reply. She was up. She was up and she was walking to the door. "Get out," she told him as she swung it open forcefully, any hope of a romantic evening blown up in a matter of minutes.
Elliot didn't try to object. He couldn't be bothered. He stood up and shoved his feet back into his boots, grabbed his coat and stormed out the door. They were good at this. Being explosive. It hadn't changed. He pushed and she shoved him right back…in this case she sent him out the door. She didn't need his approval and she certainly wasn't asking him for it.
Olivia slammed the door behind him, he didn't look back, he just stalked off towards the elevator and Olivia locked the door, she couldn't believe just how ridiculous Elliot was being. She wasn't a prize to be won. Ed didn't take her from Elliot, Elliot left and no matter how many times she told herself it was fine, that they could move past it, it seemed to rear its ugly head. At the end of the day, she wouldn't apologize for what he missed, for what happened when he was gone, for who she became. She couldn't and she wouldn't and he was an asshole for expecting her to.
Olivia went to her room, her wine glass sloshing as she stomped through her apartment. For a moment her eyes focused on the snow outside and she noticed it had picked up since she had come home a few hours earlier. She took a sip of her wine, wondering for a brief moment if her son was watching the snow or if he was immersed in a movie with his friends, and then of course her mind drifted to him and she wondered if Elliot had waited for an Uber or a taxi? She wondered what the snow was like on the ground because from her elevation, it was difficult to see a few feet away. She put the thought from her head. "Fuck him," she mumbled to herself, as if anyone other than her could hear the words as she pulled off her clothes and put on a pajama set that she loved, they felt like butter and all she wanted now was to drink the wine she had poured for herself, snuggle up under the covers and forget all about the last half hour. Olivia had known that the conversation with Elliot about Ed wasn't going to be pretty, but how dare he act like she had been a prize to be won or livestock to be traded. She and Ed had worked and there was still a gaping hole in her heart that he used to take up. No matter what happened with Elliot, she wasn't sure that space would ever not be for Ed.
It had been half an hour when the knock on the door interrupted her thoughts, interrupted her second glass of wine. Olivia groaned, she didn't bother to switch the music off, Fleetwood Mac piping through the apartment as she slipped her feet into her slippers and walked to the door. She knew who it was of course, she knew it wasn't going to be as easy as him just leaving and letting them both cool off and talking in a few days. Nope. Elliot could vanish for a decade, but he couldn't leave her tonight apparently. She looked through the peephole and saw him, his forehead was pressed against the door, arms must've been against the doorframe from the way he was standing and it was like he knew she was there.
"Liv, let me in please."
"Go home, Elliot." She pushed away from the door, she couldn't fucking do this right now. No, right now she wanted to hum along to Go Your Own Way and drink her wine and maybe open one of the cheesy romance novels that she had won at a silent auction at Noah's school. "I can't fight with you tonight."
"Olivia," she could hear him through the door, "it's a blizzard out there. I can't get a taxi. Can I please come in so I don't sleep in your lobby? Your doorman hates me."
"My doorman is a good judge of character," Olivia mumbled to herself, she didn't mean it of course, but god he was driving her nuts. She took a deep breath and returned to the door, "you have a key," she pointed out. She had given Elliot a key for something a week earlier, she had asked him to be there to accept a package and she had never asked for it back and he had never offered.
"Didn't think I was supposed to use it after you told me to get out," he answered as she swung the door open, walking away before he got a chance to close the door. "Liv," he called after her, but she didn't respond and not only did he hear the sound of her door slamming, but he could feel the tremors in his body as it became clear that she had no interest in sorting things out between them at that moment. Elliot took off his coat and hung it up, he went to the kitchen and started putting dishes away, he didn't want to just sit with his thoughts, if he did that he would eventually go and open Olivia's door and he was certain if it was locked he would consider breaking it down to be able to talk to her. He washed the dishes, the remnants from Noah having been home earlier in the day, the remaining glasses from their night before it went awry. When he was done, he noticed that the music had been turned off, he had noticed it when he first came into the apartment and he wasn't sure if the absence of noise was a good or a bad thing. Elliot hadn't meant to get mad. He hadn't meant to explode and accuse Olivia of doing something wrong by moving on, by having a man who loved her. He had put two and two together a while back but he had needed her to confirm it, and when she did it felt like a sucker punch to the heart. He took a brief moment to look out the window and take note of how the snow had picked up. He had gotten a notification on his phone that things were getting worse, recommendations to hunker down and stay inside, he had to assume Olivia had received the same notification because only a moment later he heard her footsteps.
"Here." She appeared a moment later with a couple of blankets and pillows in hand. She was making it clear of course that he would not be sleeping in her bed. "Wouldn't want you to have to lower your impeccably high standards." She was making a jab at Flutura and Angela, it hardly took a rocket scientist to figure that out. "Goodnight."
"Olivia," this time his voice was pleading. He needed to talk to her, they needed to figure it out, because even though the last thing he ever wanted to be confirmed, the l last image he wanted in his head was Olivia with Ed Tucker, he wasn't willing to let his own childish behavior what kept him from having a very real future with her. "Talk to me, please."
She could never say no to him, according to many people, Ed Tucker included, that had been her downfall. Her loyalty, her unwavering support of Elliot Stabler, and here it was once again kicking her in the ass. "I won't apologize. Not for Brian, not for Ed."
"I wanna know," Elliot repeated what he had said earlier in the evening. He put the blankets and pillows down on the floor beside the couch and then he slowly extended a hand to Olivia in hopes that she would take it. He tried to hide the excitement he felt brewing inside of him when she did take his hand and let him pull her back to the couch they had so hastily vacated earlier in the evening.
"How bad is the weather?" Olivia asked. "Are you cold?" There wasn't much she could do. She was not about to turn up the thermostat, she would die of the heat, and she didn't think another drink was going to help this go any better, but she still felt a little bad about sending him out into the street given what she had read when the alert came through to her phone.
"Pretty nasty," he shrugged, "snow is coming, roads are covered."
"What do you want to know?"
"Would it have happened if I had stayed?" Elliot asked her. He reached forward and tucked a hair behind her ear, relieved when she didn't recoil or slap him, it let him know that even if things were rocky in this very moment, they were still them.
"Brian…probably not. Bri was safe and comfortable and I just needed to go back in time. Those first couple years after you left were a blur. I dated a guy, he worked for the DA's office and it didn't work out…then it was Brian. I'm pretty sure you would've dragged me away from him kicking and screaming if you knew…" Olivia laughed, she remembered exactly how Elliot had felt about her and Brian the first time around.
"I didn't know how to manage it," he admitted. "Whatever I felt for you, the protectiveness, and then being married…I put you in a lot of bad spots Liv and I never meant to."
She took a deep breath, Brian was easy. Brian was so much easier than explaining Ed. "I was held hostage," she told him, watching as his jaw twitched, "after Lewis," she explained. "At that point…Ed and I had worked together on some things…we were friendly? Friends. My nanny, Lucy, she worked for another family and she thought something was wrong, so I went to check…ended up in a bad situation," the details weren't important, not anymore. "The perp asked if there was anyone at the NYPD who cared if I lived or died, and in that moment, Ed was the only person I could think of who might be able to get me out of the mess. It just kind of happened. He understood parts of me that no one else could. He was one of a handful of people who had full access to my file after Lewis. He understood my past, my years with you…" Olivia paused. "There was so much I didn't have to explain to him. He was a good cop, El. We didn't make his job easy, but he was a damn good cop."
"He was good to Noah?" Noah had been worming his way into Elliot's heart since the first time he had seen the boy right after Kathy had died. Their first official meeting on Mother's Day and the few meetings since, Elliot had almost instantly considered the boy one of his own and he couldn't help but wonder if that was how quickly Olivia had fallen for his own children. He hoped that his loyalty to Noah was never tested the way that Olivia's was for his children, but he would walk on fire for that boy. Noah deserved to be loved, the same way his mother did and even if he was never going to love knowing that it was Ed Tucker who did those things…he appreciated that someone had.
Olivia smiled, a full grin for a moment before her eyes glassed over as she thought of just how much Noah had loved Tucker. "Took him to the park, played with him…knew his favorite songs and foods…Ed was great to Noah. We went to Paris." She smiled fondly at the memory. "But Ed…he wanted me to retire and I wasn't ready."
"I thought you said he died?" Elliot asked slowly, his brow was creased, he could see what this discussion was doing to Olivia so he stood up slowly and went to look out the window, allowing her a moment to compose herself without making her feel like she couldn't feel whatever it was she needed to feel because he was there and Ed wasn't.
"He had cancer," she explained, "from the cleanup at Ground Zero. After we split, he worked a bit longer, then he got married…ended up eating his gun so his wife didn't have to watch him fall apart. He never wanted to be a burden," she told him. Ed hadn't wanted to burden his wife and he certainly hadn't wanted to burden Olivia.
"He's an idiot," Elliot sighed, he continued before Olivia could chastise him for speaking ill of the dead, speaking ill of a man she loved. "He's an idiot for not taking every moment with you that you would've given him. Retired or not…he's a fool for walking away from you."
"I guess you would know." Olivia watched as he kept his eyes glued on the falling snow. "How is it out there?" she asked.
"Getting worse," he admitted.
"El," she stood up and walked towards him, wrapping her arms around his torso, she pressed her chest into his back and felt instant relief that he realized into her frame, "let's go to bed."
The author of this A Merry SVU Season story will be revealed in January