Rating: initially K+, ultimately M

Disclaimer: Characters are property of Dick Wolf, NBC et al.

Spoilers: Pretty much everything's up for grabs

Pairing(s): Elliot/Olivia, incidental Olivia/Brian and Elliot/Kathy

Summary: Olivia stumbles across Elliot whose abrupt disappearance is finally explained.

A/N: For Nenê, with much love xxxxx

Part Three

2014

Returning to the living room, Olivia begins tidying the accumulated mess, plumping and re-positioning the cushions, rescuing toys from the rug, folding a baby blanket into careless squares. Really, she's just moving things about, buying herself time. She knows Elliot will join her and insist on continuing a conversation that's been stealthily looming for three years. Maybe longer. She knows that by showing him her anger, she's revealing her hurt. She knows that by running away, she's somehow tipping her hand. Involuntarily communicating to him that – despite the three year gap, despite the changes in his face and body, despite everything she's faced and survived without him – nothing's really changed. She's as indebted to, as infatuated with, as reliant on and as head over heels in love with Elliot Stabler as she ever was.

She tried to disconnect herself from him, move on from him. For three years, she pretended they were finished, even though there never was a decisive or discernible period put on their association. In truth, she's just been treading water, waiting for this day, the inevitable day he'd re-enter her life. She should have been preparing herself – if she had, by now she may have been ready to face him. But she's not. She's reeling and reacting and running and she knows he isn't going to leave until they find some sort of resolution. Because she knows him. And she knows that he knows her. Better than anyone. Unlike any other man in her life, Elliot figured out years before exactly when to leave her to her self-imposed seclusion and when to confront her and never let up, employing all the blunt persistence and impudent honesty with which she first fell in love. In anticipation of that characteristically Stabler tactic, she confronts him the second he enters the room, muttering an impatient and huffy:

"So? What d'you want then?"

Elliot is taken back but recovers. "A drink would be nice."

She waves a hand at the kitchen. "Brian left some beers in the fridge, that Irish crap that men love. Help yourself."

He walks to the fridge, opens it and pulls out a beer. "You joining me?"

"No. Thanks." She plucks up a newspaper and folds it. But when her partner moves closer, picking up a book of nursery rhymes, she holds up a hand and takes a step back. "Don't help me. Just…tell me what you want."

Again, he's taken back. But this time, he doesn't recover as easily. Elliot shifts on the spot, gestures weakly with his beer then tells her in a low, faltering voice, "Not to…lose you. I guess."

"Lose me?" She kneels at the coffee table, arranging her outdated newspapers and baby magazines into a pile. "You never had me."

"I did once." He draws closer, taking a seat on the couch. "I had you as a friend, a partner…a lover."

She looks up at him, pausing before murmuring dimly, "Ancient history." Olivia gives the ends of the magazines an orderly rap on the table, voice reverting to its usual imperviousness as she adds, "And you made your choice. I accepted that. Doesn't mean I have to live with it for the rest of my life."

"But I do?"

"You said vows."

"So did we. For better or worse."

She humphs, muttering under her breath as she rises, "Still waiting for the better to happen…"

"Oh, come on…" Elliot leans back into the couch cushions, lips curling up into a coaxing smile, "we weren't all bad. We stuck by each other, had some laughs." He takes a sip of his beer, eyes glinting up at her. "And the sex…I hope you're not counting that as part of the worse."

Her head shakes slowly, her brow creased with consternation. "It was excruciating. Having that after all those years….seven years of being invisible to you—"

"You were never—"

"—to finally have you see me, touch me. To be able to touch you, look at you, all of you. To…be with you knowing there was a time limit on it—" She draws her lower lip between her teeth, raking it back and forth in an effort to control the words spilling from her tongue. "It was like...living with a ticking time bomb, always hoping for more time, wondering if, when—. Just waiting for your guilt to set in, for some crisis to send you running home again. Back to safety, back to sacrifice, back to Kathy and the kids."

Elliot leans forward, eyes on her face and smile failing. "That's why you broke it off? That's why you disappeared on me?"

Olivia scoops up a teddy bear then spreads her arms. "Well, I was right, wasn't I?"

"Maybe if you hadn't run, you wouldn't have been right." He gets up from the couch and moves towards her, face lined with frustration and incredulity. "Maybe I wouldn't have kissed Dani Beck in the exact same spot I kissed you. Maybe I wouldn't have ended up in Kathy's bed if you had just trusted me a little, talked to me. D'you ever think of that?"

"What would be the point of that?" She flings the teddy in the direction of a plastic bucket, muttering in a resigned tone, "What would be the point of wondering and second-guessing and obsessing over what might have been? I spent a decade doing it and where'd it get me?"

"Still here," he insists, putting all his irritation into stabbing a finger at the floor. "Still talking about it. About us. About what was, what coulda been, or shoulda been. What's that tell you?"

She quits tidying and looks about at the mess, hands on hips. "That both of us are gluttons for punishment?"

He releases an exhausted, wretched laugh, dropping his head and wagging it at the floor. "Maybe. I don't know…" One hand runs over his head and down his face, two fingers smoothing over his ragged goatee. His eyes when he looks up at her are red-rimmed, lost and absolutely spent. "I just know…I can't…let you go. I know I should, I know I have no rights here. And believe me – I've tried. But I can't."

There's a short silence in which neither of them speaks but neither of them looks away. Their eyes remain locked despite the chasm of misunderstanding between them. Olivia's chest rises and falls in rapid breaths, incited by the conflict, the confrontation, the passion he always brought out in her. Holding her gaze, Elliot lifts an arm, stretching it toward the door.

"Tell me to go." He shuffles closer, his other arm spreading. "Tell me to go, Liv. If you really want me out of your life…I'll respect that. I owe you that much."

Olivia is silent a moment, eyeing him across the room. Then her head begins to shake back and forth. "God…" she swipes a hand over her forehead, releases an infuriated breath, "what a sneaky, underhand, fucking screwed-up thing to do."

He frowns. "What?"

"This!" Her hand darts out to indicate him. "Everything! Every word you just said."

"Right back atcha," he mutters, tipping his beer at her then lifting it to his lips, "Scuttling my mission…"

She scoops up a toy giraffe and lobs it into the plastic bucket. "You're lucky I didn't write you up for challenging a superior officer."

"My guess is I'm out of a job anyway." He one-handedly shoots a baby alien from the couch cushions into the bucket. "Again."

"Well, my squadroom's full," she mumbles, casting him a cautionary glance.

He sips his beer and smiles. "Your squadroom…."

She doesn't smile back. "What?"

He pauses momentarily, takes another sip of beer then jerks his head upwards. "Hey."

Olivia continues her tidy-up. "What…?"

"Got any pics?"

"What?"

"Of the ceremony."

She rolls her eyes but points to a bureau by the window.

Abandoning his beer, Elliot heads over and picks up the photo of her in full dress uniform, accepting her certificate of promotion. "Wow…look at that…Olivia Benson…" He lifts his gaze from the frame to her. "I'm proud of you."

She picks up his beer from the coffee table and takes a thoughtful sip, swirling it in her mouth before swallowing. "I'm still…finding my way with it, with…everything. Being the boss, being a mom…"

His head bobs. "So couldn't we just find our way with this too?"

Her spine stiffens. "And if I've moved on?"

"After thirteen years together?"

"After three years apart."

"We've been apart before." He replaces the photo on the bureau then turns back to her. "You deserted me on more than one occasion."

"That was…" she turns away, head shaking, "very different."

"How?"

She wanders to the couch, perching on the arm with his beer dangling from her fingertips. "Elliot…" she opens her mouth with hesitation, only finding the words as she's speaking them, "my whole life is divided in two – before the day you left and after." She looks up, meets his gaze with direct eyes. "There's only one other day I can say that about. And just like the day my mom told me where I came from…" her head shakes again, one hand lifting to press against her chest, "it changed who I was. It changed…who she was to me, who we were to each other. You can never be…who you once were to me."

Elliot ventures closer, perching on the opposite arm of the couch. "So what if I was someone different? Something more?"

"Then we're right back where we always were." She leaves a pointed pause and does not shirk his gaze as she says, "What about your wife?"

"Are you asking me to leave Kathy—"

"No—" Olivia rises, walking away from him but pointing back at him with the hand holding his beer. "I'd never do that, you know I'd never do that." She stops, shakes her head and sips her beer, "That's never what I wanted or…expected."

"Then you're asking me to leave you. To forget everything, to go on with my life while you go on with yours. Separately."

"I don't see another alternative. Not if we both want to be happy."

His eyes blink at her then narrow. "You were never this all-or-nothing before."

"Well…" she peers down the neck of the bottle then mumbles, "guess I'd never truly had nothing before."

"You've never had all either." He leaves the couch and moves closer, his voice low and rough and compelling. "And you never will. Because Cassidy can't give it to you. You said it yourself – he was a substitute. For me. You wanted me, you always did. Me, Olivia, and no one else." He's standing in front of her, much too close, lips hovering near her forehead, her temples, her eyes and ears. "And I—I wanted you. No one else. Since the day I set eyes on you, I knew…" his hands twitch, so close to her hips and her waist and the paradise between her legs, "…there was something here, something fated. Unavoidable. That's why neither of us can walk away." He's standing in front of her— Elliot is standing in front of her at long last and the pull between them is back, convincing her, convincing him, coaxing both their bodies into letting their minds hand over control. "We're connected," he whispers, so close that she feels his breath on her face. "And it doesn't matter what we do…we'll always be connected."

Olivia breathes in and holds it, gaze dipping to his mouth then away. She grasps the slippery beer bottle in her hand, holding it so tightly that it nearly slips from her fingers to the floor. "I don't believe in fate," she rasps, turning and walking to the kitchen.

"No, you didn't believe in us. In me."

"El—"

"And maybe I couldn't offer you everything back then but I'm offering now." He follows her into the kitchen, addresses her turned, tensed back. "But this time, you gotta do the same, Liv. You can't just run out on me cos you think you know me better than I know myself."

"I do know you better than you know yourself," she says, dumping the rest of his beer down the drain.

"Except when it comes to how I feel about you. You never understood that." He steps closer, turning her by her shoulders to face him. "You never let me love you because you never thought you deserved that love."

"I don't," she answers stoically. "Your love doesn't belong to me."

He smiles sadly, runs his palms down her arms. "I know it would be so much more convenient for both of us if that were true. But it's not and you know it. I didn't choose this any more than you did. But…I belong with you. I know that now. How much longer is it gonna take for you to realize that—"

"I belong with you." She's finishing his sentence, realizing its truth and stating the obvious all at once.

Elliot smiles slightly in response. "Yeah."

"I belong with you," she repeats, voice cracking with certainty.

He nods. "I know."

She gulps, tears beginning to well in her eyes. "I love you."

"I know that too." He pulls her in and wraps her up, murmuring in her ear, "I love you too."

Her arms wrap round him, holding on tight. And her body sags, releasing itself into him as her eyes close over and her head falls to his shoulder. "I love you…"

"I love you…" He presses her against him, inhales her scent and kisses her hair.

Her hands draw back, forming fists and beating against his back just once. "Where have you been? ?" she demands, half crying, half laughing.

Elliot doesn't open his eyes. He just burrows in closer and answers, "Everywhere but where I wanted to be."

End of Part Three

To Be Continued in Part Four...