Fin had been watching the interaction in the office. 'That did not look good,' he thought to himself. He knew something was about to go down. He didn't know what but he was sure he wasn't going to like it.
Slap: Chapter 6
The week continued with the usual hectic pace of the SVU. Olivia barely had a chance to think about all the changes that were going to happen in the next week. She was grateful for that. By Thursday she was starting to worry that she would never get a chance to talk to the others. She'd spent a lot of hours worrying over who she would tell first and how. She decided on Fin.
Thursday afternoon they were all returning from the M.E.'s office where they'd gotten the run down on their new perp, a likely career criminal now escalating. She saw Fin head upstairs to the lockers and followed him up under the pretense of shedding her sweater.
"Fin, you gotta minute?" She asked him as she opened her locker but didn't take anything in or out.
"Sure, Benson, what's up?" He turned towards his female colleague.
She hesitated for a quick minute, then saw the dented locker out of the corner of her eye and she remembered why she was doing this in the first place.
"I wanted to let you know, I'm…ah….I'm transferring out. Got the papers earlier this week. Wanted to tell you before word got out." She spit this out fairly quickly, as if she didn't want the words to linger in case she chickened out and wanted to take them back.
"You're leaving?" he asked bluntly.
"Yes," she replied simply.
"How come?" he asked. Trust Fin to just blurt out whatever he was thinking, not tiptoeing around the issue.
"I just…I can't…" Now she was stumbling. "This just isn't the right place for me anymore. I can't do it anymore."
"What happened?" he asked again.
Olivia rubber her face. "Nothing happened. This place, these victims, they're just too much."
"Nah," he replied. "That's not it." He said it without any aggression, any defensiveness in his voice, as if he was simply stating a fact. He looked at her acutely.
"Does this have anything to do with why that locker has a huge dent in it?"
Her cheeks started burning. 'Damn him' she thought. She should've just left without saying anything. "No!" she said adamantly. "I just…"
He interrupted her. "Or maybe why you showed up in a cast 3 weeks ago, or why you've lost 20 pounds and put on an additional 5 pounds of muscle? Come on, Benson, we're not stupid. You don't need to tell us the details, but don't expect us to believe a stupid answer like nothing. Not after 10 years."
He paused and let her contemplate what he had said. She didn't reply, but looked down briefly before looking back up and meeting his eye.
He reached out and grabbed her on the shoulder, in a very awkward, brotherly fashion. "Hey, whatever you think you need to do. I'm not gonna pretend I understand, but you know that if you need us, we ALL will have your back. Just because one person let you down doesn't mean the rest of us have as well. "
She looked at him closely at that. He was hitting a little too close to home. "Yeah. Okay," she said quietly. He gave her shoulder one last squeeze and headed back downstairs.
She plopped down on the bench and stared at the locker in front of her without really seeing it. Her eyes were drawn to its neighbor with the large dent in the center. She sighed as she thought about how she had trusted Elliot with her heart, her soul, and he had punched right through it's center. Resolve steeled once again she walked downstairs and joined her colleagues at work.
Fin, as always, went about the day as if nothing was different, didn't treat her differently or say anything else to her.
She grabbed a spare moment when Elliot had gone upstairs to talk to Munch at the coffee machine. He was measuring out coffee grounds and filling the carafe when she approached him. "You know, I never understood how you could follow the instructions just like the rest of us, yet your coffee always tastes so horrible," she said to him.
"It's one of my many talents," he said snidely back. When she didn't move or say anything else he turned to her. "What's up, Benson."
She turned to face him and said quietly "I'm transferring out, John. I need to get out." She was not expecting the reaction that she got.
"What the hell, Benson! What the hell did he do to you?" he said angrily, eyes scanning the room for the cause of his ire.
"Nothing, John! Listen, it's not about him, not about that," she tried to get him to quiet down, not wanting attention from the other inhabitants of the squadroom.
"Like hell it isn't." He gave her one final look and stalked away, up the stairs. She realized where he was going 15 seconds later and jogged after him.
She caught up with him at the top of the stairs, just as Elliot was heading down.
"You asshole!" he yelled, getting in Stabler's face. If she hadn't been so pissed at the situation it almost would have been comical. "What the hell did you do to her?"
"What? I didn't… What are you talking about?"
"Oh, the hell you don't. What did you do that makes her flinch every time you make a sudden move around her?"
Elliot was stammering in front of the older detective, his normally calm affront rattled.
"What made her stop eating unless someone was watching her? Look at her, Stabler, she look normal to you? What'd you do? Threaten her? Hit her?"
"Look," Elliot interjected into his tirade. "It wasn't like that."
"Then what was it like? I'm pretty sure you just didn't take a swing at her like she was a beat cop that pissed you off. If you had, she would've kicked your ass, so what the hell did you do to make her leave? You take your anger out on her one too many times?"
Olivia's heart was pounding. This was NOT how this was supposed to happen, not in the middle of the squadroom. "Hey, this is not about me getting slapped would you guys keep it down!" She hissed at them, looking over her shoulder.
"Leave? What do you mean leave?" Elliot's eyes spun from Olivia to Munch and back. At the same time Fin, who had come up behind her said "Slapped, what do you mean slapped?
Olivia ran her hands through her hair. 'What a clusterfuck this was turning into, she thought. She shot a glaring look at Fin wanting him to drop it.
Fin pushed his way past Olivia closer to Elliot. "You need to start explaining, man," he said, getting a little into Elliot face.
John looked at her, slightly apologetic. "You hadn't told him yet?"
"No, I hadn't. Thank you very much." She started forward, pushing Elliot aside as she tried to make her way into the locker room.
"Olivia, what the hell is he talking about?" He reached out and lightly grabbed her arm, only to have Fin push him in the chest, pushing him back a foot, out of arm's reach of Olivia. She had stilled instantly to his touch and stiffened. Before she could turn around, Cragen's voice boomed from below.
"Detectives. Get back down here! We got a DB on W 36th St. " Taking in the situation on the stairs, he continued, "Fin, Munch, you go." He waved a piece of paper at them. Munch glared at Elliot and then at Olivia before stomping down the stairs, Fin gave Elliot another shove for good measure and followed, leaving the two other detectives alone. Elliot was still stammering. Olivia had never seen him at such a loss for words.
"I'm sorry, Elliot. This wasn't how I intended for you to find out," she said bluntly, without the apologetic tinge to her words that she'd had with Fin and Munch.
"You're leaving? What do you mean?" he asked quietly, staring at her.
"I'm transferring out. Another unit. As of Monday." She kept the details to a minimum.
"Monday? These things take weeks, months even. It can't happen that fast…" his voice trailed off as he realized. "You've known about this for a while." He said bluntly as he realized. She nodded.
"Why?" he asked, not wanting the whole truth, and knowing that he wasn't going to get it.
"I just…I can't do this anymore." She looked him in the eye, daring him to be the one to look away. He was.
"Can't do what? This job? You love this job." He searched her face, looking for something. Her eyes were wide and looking at him as if willing him to understand without her saying it. She just looked at him, communicating to him all of the things that he wished were untrue. Then she turned and walked down the stairs to find out what the story was on their new dead body.
She left him standing at the top of the stairs with his heart in his throat. As she traipsed down the stairs, she realized she had been expecting much more of an explosion out of him. She heard him say quietly "We're not done with this." She didn't stop.
She rubbed her neck as she sat down at her desk, then looked up in surprise as Elliot sat down across from her. She hadn't heard him following her. Cragen walked by and said quietly to her "That didn't go as you planned, did it?" She looked up at him as she flipped through her phone messages. "That is the understatement of the century." He patted her on the shoulder and headed over towards the coffee.
The rest of the day slipped by faster and more easily than she was expecting. Around 6pm she slipped into Cragen's office and shook his hand, accepting his offer for help, anytime, for anything. She passed by her desk, picked up a canvas bag that held the personal things from her desk and locker and then headed for the door. Elliot had gone into one of the interview rooms to talk with a witness, Fin and Munch were still in the field. She knew Elliot would call her later, there was no point in waiting around to have another showdown here. She paused at the door, taking one last look at the room where she had spent the last 10 years, remembering the good and the bad. She was sad to leave, but also looking forward to a fresh start. A new place where no one knew, or needed to know, her past.
She'd arranged to meet Casey for a drink after work, she felt she at least owed her an explanation before just disappearing off the radar. She dropped off her bag at home and headed downtown.
Two hours and three drinks later she climbed out of a taxi. She was surprised, and grateful, that there was no one sitting on her stoop waiting for her. She didn't notice Elliot's car parked partway down the block. About 30 seconds after she'd walked in her door, before she even had a chance to shed her jacket, the buzzer in her apartment went off. It buzzed repeatedly and intermittently. She knew it was Elliot downstairs. He couldn't just buzz like a normal person, had to hit the button 4 or 5 times. She ignored it and walked to the window, seeing him standing on the stoop. She jumped slightly as the buzzer went off again. She hit the talk button and said loudly into it. "Hold on, Stabler. Gimme a minute." She walked into the kitchen, pulled a glass down from the cabinet, wiping it quickly with a towel. She stood on her tiptoes and pulled the bottle of scotch from the cabinet above the refrigerator. She poured a sliver of the golden liquid and tossed it back, then poured a generous two fingers and plopped an ice cube in the glass. She reached in the fridge and pulled out a beer. Pocketing a bottle opener she took the beer and her drink and headed downstairs.
As she opened the door and stepped outside, Elliot turned around. Noticing her coat and the drinks in her hand, he said "I don't even get to come inside anymore?"
"No, not tonight," she said as she handed him the beer. She took a seat on the steps and waited for him to take a seat next to her. He looked at the bottle and then at her as she took a sip of the scotch. She reached in her bottle and pulled out the bottle opener, handed it to him.
He opened the beer and handed it back to her, leaning back onto his elbows on the steps. He could smell the booze on her. He didn't know where she had been but he doubted this was her first drink of the night.
"Where were you earlier?" he asked.
"Out with Casey," Olivia replied with a shrug. "I thought she deserved to know without finding out from a third party." She wasn't quite drunk, but had definitely had her tongue socially lubricated by the alcohol. "Sorry I didn't get a chance to tell you before Munch blew his lid."
He looked over at her out of the corner of his eye. "That's not your first," he said, gesturing towards her drink. "How many have you had?"
She shrugged as she took another sip. "Like mother, like daught—"
"Hey!" He cut her off, he sat up and reached to lift her chin to meet her eye to eye. "Don't you talk about yourself like that." She couldn't help but to flinch when she felt his finger touch her face.
He saw her flinch, saw the moment of hesitation in her eyes before she quickly looked down, away from him.
"Oh my god," he said slowly, rubbing his face with the hand that didn't have the beer. "It's true."
She could feel the alcohol setting down into her stomach, the subtle, familiar burn. The combination of the fresh drink on top of the drinks she had earlier was making her head a little fuzzy, but not so fuzzy she didn't know what he was talking about. She didn't say anything, making him be the one to say it.
"You're afraid of me. You flinch when I come near you. You think I'm going to snap again."
"No, Elliot, I don't." She gave a heavy sigh. "I just…" She didn't know what to say. They sat there in silence each sipping their drinks.
"Olivia…" Elliot began, he couldn't stand the silence, the not knowing.
She cut him off. "It took me two years, Elliot. I just…"
"What took two years, Liv? We've been partners for almost 10."
"It took me two years before I trusted you. I told you about my mother, about my 'father' because I thought you needed to know, but it was almost two years before I really trusted you with that information." She paused before going on. "We were working a case, were debating how you never know what genes you're going to pass on to your kids. I said something about have a drunk mother and a violent father that I didn't know anything about. You interrupted me before I could finish my thought and said…" she stopped and took another sip of her drink. "You said 'And look how good you turned out.'" She said it with a crooked smile, as if she was embarrassed to be saying it out loud. She went on "And then in the next breath, you invited me to dinner at your house that night. As if it was no big deal." She took another small sip, thinking she had to slow down or she'd end plastered.
"Liv, it wasn't a big deal, it's not a big deal,"
"It was too me." They both could hear her voice shaking. Olivia swallowed and willed it steady. "That day….that day was one of the few times I have really missed my mother. I wished she was still alive so I could tell her…Tell her that there was a man out there who was a good man who didn't believe all of those things. One who knew all the horrible, dirty things about me and still invited me to his house to see his children."
"Olivia…"
She didn't let him finished. "I trusted you, Elliot. I trusted you with everything and…and I can't anymore." She took another sip and looked down at her hands. Thank god for alcohol. She wasn't a drunk like her mother, but she could appreciate the numbing affect.
"You can't trust me to have your back anymore? Can't be my partner anymore. I understand the other bit. I hurt you and I am so, so sorry. I can't fix that, I know, but…" He drifted off. He knew he had lost a part of her he would never get back, but he couldn't lose her entirely. She stabilized him, she made him a better detective, a better person, a better father. He couldn't let her leave."
She thought about what he'd said for a minute before replying. "No, El, I trust you to have my back. I trusted you for that within 5 minutes of meeting you and I would trust you with my life for as long as I draw breath. But my heart, El, my heart….That I can't trust you with anymore. And the problem is….The problem is Elliot, is that with you, I can't separate the two anymore."
She looked at her glass, still with at least an ounce of scotch in it. She fished out the ice cube with her fingers and tossed in into the tree planter on the sidewalk. She finished the rest of the drink in one swallow and stood, patting her former partner on the shoulder. "See you around, Stabler." She let herself inside, leaving him sitting unmoving on the steps. Up in her apartment, she looked out the window and saw him still sitting on the steps, his position unchanged since she'd left. Taking a deep breath, she stripped off her clothes and put herself to bed without supper.
Up next: Cragen vs Elliot, Elliot vs Fin, Olivia and the new precinct…
Pls review.