Of Course
Fleeterberry
Set after SVU 24x12/OC 3x12, based on that BTS clip of FinLivia which I guess is Ep 13 (but really, no spoilers)
Disclaimer: I don't own them

the road to hell is paved with good intentions

1

It has been a long time since she's had to drive a tanked friend home from a bar, even longer since it was for a celebration rather than a loss, longer still - if ever and as she searches her mind she's pretty sure never because when they were young enough to do those sorts of things the dragging home of a drunk Fin would have fallen to his partner while she and Elliot spent the rest of the night looking for an excuse to lose control around each other while desperately nursing a beer to ensure they never actually would - that it was Fin who needed her help.

She doesn't mind a bit, in fact, she's happy to provide the assist because fuck Fin has always had her back and it's one less worry to have on her way home if she sees Fin safely to his door and she's glad that he was able to relax and enjoy the get together following his commendation. Fin is atypically chatty as she ushers him to her car, but he quiets once they're inside, perhaps embarrassed by the four failed attempts and a fifth successful - although mostly due to Olivia's intervention - hooking of his seatbelt. She thinks he's drifting off to sleep when his head leans toward the passenger window, but after a solid ten minutes of silence, he surprises her with a sudden turn toward her.

"You want to grab a snack? I'm hungry. Let's get pancakes."

Olivia smirks as she continues past the IHOP sign that spurred his brilliant idea. "Munchies, Fin, really? I thought you were just drunk."

He makes a disgruntled sound while he folds his arms across his chest as though he's thoroughly disappointed they're not getting those pancakes. "All I had for dinner was a handful of peanuts at the bar."

"You'll be home in twenty minutes and then you can convince Phoebe to make you something." She glances at her pouting friend, a warmth filling her heart when the mention of his other half brings a sappy, contented smile to his face. "Doubt it'll be pancakes at this hour, but maybe she loves you that much."

"I'm shocked and appalled you don't love me enough to stop and have pancakes with me." He's fully grinning when his head lazily turns completely toward her, his Phoebe smile drifting up into his eyes as he stares at her. "Speaking of love," he starts and she tries to cut him off by shaking her head, but the whole reason she's driving right now is because his judgement is impaired so she's not surprised that it doesn't have the effect she wanted, "Haven't heard from Stabler in a minute. How's he doing?"

She winces and pretends the relatively empty streets require her full attention before she lets out a heavy sigh that, if Fin were sober, would tell him everything he needed to know and result in an apology. "I'm sure one of us would hear something if anything were wrong." She clenches her teeth and reminds herself that his silence is, this time at least, her own doing because after months of unreturned calls and texts, he finally took the hint and stopped trying to reach out.

"Like you two don't talk." He's staring at her profile and she's trying to force her face to neutral, but even drunk, he's known her for twenty-five years and is her closest friend and he's gotten as close as anyone besides Elliot ever could to reading her mind. "Shit, Liv, really? What the fuck happened?"

She shrugs and assumes most of this conversation will be forgotten by morning and the truth comes out easier than when she's talking to her therapist. "I've always been there for him. I always went running when he called, did anything he needed, protected him and his family and his marriage and he never returned the favor. He's never been there for me." She's struggling to control the tears as the next words form, their sentiment ringing painfully true as she says them. "It's never going to happen, Fin, I can't forgive him. I don't even think we can be friends."

She's only realizing as she says it, but she's thankful for the red light that allows her to stop the truck and gives her a moment to squeeze her eyes closed against the pain and the tears and the truth because she already made the decision and she just hasn't recognized it until now but this is why she doesn't call him back and doesn't read his texts and suddenly becomes very, very busy with personal errands she has to run whenever she's afraid SVU and the task force might have to team up. She'd told Amanda that she wasn't over the way he'd left yet and somehow in the last few months, she's finally decided that she is never going to get over it and now she's accepting that she has to move on and forget about him and it fucking hurts and she feels like she's grieving his loss all over again, but she tries to tell herself he was never really there to begin with. Elliot was always with his family, mentally if not physically, and whatever bullshit she deluded herself with on a daily basis during their partnership was just that - bullshit.

She's angrily wiping at her tears when a horn sounds behind her and she's pressing a little too hard on the accelerator and she's telling herself that she'll get over it easier this time because she never really believed he was back and it doesn't matter if she feels like hell right now because she already decided and giving it voice shouldn't matter so damn much.

"Liv, I- damn- I mean- you really," he lapses into silence again and Olivia tells herself that alcohol is honestly having no effect on him right now because he wouldn't be able to think of anything to say sober either. She can't blame him. The concept of the end of Benson and Stabler is a difficult one for her to grasp and she's the one who made the decision. The second time, at least.

The quiet lasts all of three minutes until they're sitting at another red light and Olivia is desperate to be home so she can distract herself with housework or paying bills or yoga or anyfuckingthing to stop the pain for a few minutes. She needs to get back to the comfortable numbness that surrounds her when she's too busy to think about him and them and what the fuck went wrong and if there was anything she could have done to stop it before it did.

But then Fin is shaking his head and staring at her while he does. "I know you don't want to hear it from me, but you probably never heard it from him, so whatever, you deserve to know. He loves you. Really fucking loves you. He's just an idiot."

The tears threaten again and she bites her tongue hard enough to draw blood because she doesn't want to cry anymore. She wants to be over this already. "He is an idiot and a selfish one at that, but I assure you whatever he and you and anyone else might believe, he doesn't love me." She swallows hard and grimaces at the tang of blood in her mouth and she refuses to think of when he flat out declared he loved her - because he was obviously out of his fucking mind with grief and probably hallucinating that Kathy was standing in front of him - and pretends she doesn't remember his desperate, pathetic attempts to flirt with her and draw her back into his orbit - because she almost fell for it and she's glad she didn't because at least she didn't get in so damn deep this time. It might hurt right now, but she's still fucking able to breathe and she couldn't when he'd left, when she'd lost her imaginary boyfriend, when she felt like someone had chopped her in two and stolen away the other half so she'd never be whole again. But she knows better now because she survived it and worse.

She's always been whole, she tells herself, unhappy but whole. She was as close to happy as she'd ever get with Noah and her squad before the asshole had showed up and dropped his shitload of problems in her lap and expected her to help him and she helped because that's what she does, but this time, she's managed to save herself before he can kill her again, she's crawled away from him in time and she's going to stay away where he can't hurt her again simply because he's not the man she imagined him to be all those years ago.

She's trying to distract herself by mentally previewing the directions to Fin's place and she knows how to get there but she doesn't visit him all that often and she's not sure but she thinks it's six more turns and she's almost excited as she puts on her turn signal and makes a right and mentally counts down to five more turns.

There are three more turns - four, if she'd counted correctly from the start, but she hadn't - according to her mental map when he prompts her to respond.

"Liv, seriously-"

"No, Fin, if," she clears the lump from her throat and prays like fuck he forgets this conversation because she doesn't want him to remember her crying over the idea that Elliot Stabler doesn't love her thirteen years after he walked the fuck out of her life and didn't look back until he fucking needed something from her. "If he loved me at all, he would have been there for me the one goddamn time I needed him."

"BX9? Duarte was keeping that shit under wraps-" Fin's starting to make excuses for the asshole he evidently still considers a friend and she's just not interested in hearing it, so she takes a breath and cuts him off with one word that she knows will shut him right the fuck up.

"Lewis."

Again, silence reigns in the truck and she's glad for it as she makes a left and now she realizes that her math was off and she's shaking her head at her inability to count and once again there are three more turns when he opens his damn mouth and this time makes her regret offering him a fucking ride home.

"He was there."

The truck stops dead in the street, a direct result of the way she slams on the brakes, but she isn't even aware of it and she's not aware of the fact that her foot slips off the brake and the truck starts rolling again because the only thing she can see is Fin's face and how he's staring back at her, eyes wide, and the way he looks down like he thinks he shouldn't have said anything and the way he's gripping the damn plaque in his lap like it's his lifeline and now she's fucking furious and shellshocked and she's not sure if he should have kept it to himself or told her ten fucking years ago, but either way she can't swear she won't wrap her hands around his throat and choke the fucking hell out of him for dropping this fucking bomb on her now.

"What?" The word is barely a whisper and still takes all of her effort and she sees the way Fin is grabbing at the door handle and the dashboard and his commendation drops to the floor forgotten and she's wondering if he's actually considering jumping out of the truck, but she doesn't really care, not as long as he waits until he explains himself.

"The car, the car, Liv, the brakes!"

It takes her a moment to even hear him, a moment longer to understand, and yet another moment before she realizes that she's responsible for stopping the truck that has drifted over the center line and into light, but still oncoming, traffic. The adrenaline rush of headlights aiming straight at her allows her to twist the wheel, pulling back into the proper lane for a moment before doing one better and pulling over entirely and shifting into park.

Then she's turning again, her whole body shaking, whether from adrenaline or shock she doesn't know, her eyes locked on Fin's. She doesn't need to ask again and she's glad for that because the lump is back in her throat and it's choking her and bringing tears to her eyes and she's fisting her hands and fighting back the urge to scream and she thinks maybe she's dying and she's still fucking furious because every single time she thinks she's out of this shitshow of a relationship he pulls her back in and this time it's not even him pulling her in and she's starting to understand that she and Elliot really are inexplicably intertwined and she'll never be free of him.

"He came back." He winces and looks away, a nervous shrug taking the place of his usual self-assured manner. "I don't know if Cragen called him or he saw it on the news or how he found out, I just know he showed up in the hospital that night you escaped and he wanted to see you." He takes a deep breath, maybe waiting for Olivia to say something, maybe realizing she is absolutely beyond words right now. "You know how he gets, he was crazy, hysterical, nearly got into a fist fight with Amaro and Rollins was threatening to call security, and I-" he stops then, a long sigh seeming to deflate him as it escapes. "You'd finally gotten over him, Liv, over the way he left, and you were happy with Cassidy and you liked Nick and Amanda and I thought seeing him would just bring it all back up so I told him to leave."

She thinks about saying something and she doesn't know what, except maybe just asking for a minute to absorb this information, but instead a violent sob rips from her mouth and she leans forward onto the wheel, her body rocking back and forth. She can't believe it. She can't fucking believe it. He came back. He came back for her when she needed him. He was right fucking there, trying to get to her, and her friends stopped him, the very same friends who had seen what she went through when she lost him and she knows they probably meant well, or she'll know that eventually when the shock wears off, but right now she hates that he was fucking there and she could have seen his face and the pain in his expression and the love in his eyes and he would have held her while she tried to gather the broken parts of her soul back together and everything would have been a little bit easier for her but for well-meaning friends.

Fin continues when her sobbing quiets, his voice soft and steady like the dam has broken now and the words are just going to flow out of him, these secrets he's kept all these years. "He begged me to let him see you, said he'd wait until you were asleep, but he just wanted to see that you were ok. I didn't want to let him upset you since you had enough shit going on." He pauses and when he speaks again, she understands he was steeling himself for this confession. "I lied and said I'd offered to call him and you said no, so he looked me dead in the eye and made me promise I'd take care of you." His voice is choked as he continues. "I felt so damn guilty that I swore to him I would and I haven't left your side, Liv."

She understands, she thinks, that Fin made a decision to protect her, a decision he thought would protect her, that has driven the occasional probing into her relationship with Elliot to check if he made the right call. He has kept his promise to Elliot and tried to support her, thinking he was walking the tightrope between two people who often appeared to have opposing interests and yet could never really escape the gravitational pull to each other.

She sniffles and lifts her head, trying to catch her friend's eyes but he keeps them stubbornly turned away. She wants to forgive him for his mistake, but a shiver runs through her that sparks her anger again. "You were never going to tell me, were you?" She's glad for the fury, for the ire that makes her want to scream and fight and break things because it's far easier than the pain, than the idea that there's yet another parallel universe where things weren't always so fucking awful for her.

He shakes his head slowly. "I figured he'd tell you eventually or you didn't need to know, but then tonight you said-" He trails off and she understands he's only telling her now because she backed him into a corner. Her confession that Elliot's absence during the worst time of her life was the one thing she couldn't forgive would have made the guilt unbearable. "If you hate him or you can't forgive him or you don't want to go there with him, that's your call, but please don't hold my actions against him." He's nodding quicker and quicker and she's not sure but she thinks he might be fighting back sobs of his own. "That was on me and I'm so, so sorry."

Her hands are shaking when she eases the truck back into the street. Her eyes already feel heavy and swollen and she knows there are more tears to come, but shit she needs to get to Elliot, to talk to him, to tell him why she was so damn angry and let him know it wasn't his fault because yes, the way he left was absolutely wrong, but forgivable and even as her anger with Fin and Nick and Amanda rolls through her, she feels the relief of forgiving Elliot washing over her and she just needs to fucking see him and touch him and reconsider everything that has happened since he came home because he'd tried to come home before and she had no idea and he must have thought something had changed two years ago because she was willing to see him and no, she wants to scream, no, it's only now that something has changed and he's completely unaware and she wants them to finally be on the same fucking page.

Fin doesn't speak again until he's standing on the sidewalk because she has delivered him to his door as promised and he's just fucking uprooted everything she believes and he knows as well as she does that she's not going to let him finish and so his voice is defeated before he gets far. "Liv, I-"

"You meant well, I know, just don't." She can't listen to him apologize again because she knows he would never have done it had he known how much it would hurt her.

He tries anyway, his voice soft and full of the apology she doesn't want or need to hear. "You know-"

She shakes her head and turns away because she cannot deal with this right now and she knows it'll be ok with Fin because he's Fin and she trusts him and once she sees Elliot, everything else will just right itself. She holds up her hand, halfway between a wave and a gesture to stop, because even she doesn't know which she actually means.

She waits until he gives up and turns toward his place before she looks back at him, watching the careful way he walks to avoid tripping over his feet, taking his slumping shoulders and hanging head. She feels bad, knowing that he'd been happy, they'd been celebrating, and now it was ruined. Her fingers press the button, lowering the window as she calls out.

"Fin, wait," she sees him turn, the way his eyes slowly meet hers, and she feels the sorrow and regret radiating off him. "It's ok, Fin, really. I'll be ok." She nods, forces a smile she almost convinces herself is real because she's feeling like maybe things actually will be ok now.

"I thought I was helping you out."

She nods again. "Of course you did." And she knows it's true because this man has never, ever done anything to hurt her. Of course the one time he did was unintentional. She lets him size her up, as well as he can from ten feet away, and he probably sees the honesty in her expression because he nods in response. She thinks they're on solid ground once again and she smiles. "I'll see you on Monday."

He smiles back, his voice returning to normal. "Of course you will."

A moment later she's flooring it, trying to close the distance between herself and her partner as quickly as possible.