McGrath spots him first.
"Detective Stabler, fancy meeting you here…"
Fuck.
Olivia can hear them start making small talk by the elevator. She's just finished her meeting, a goddamn hour with the Chief—twenty minutes discussing the case and forty listening to McGrath's musings on inflation.
She rushes out of her office but slows her gait, reminding herself to be just a little less obvious about injecting herself in the stilted conversation unfolding down the hallway.
She turns the corner and locks eyes with Elliot who's somehow diverted McGrath's attention to tonight's ALDS game, Yankees vs. Astros.
"But I think if Verlander—"
"Chief," she interrupts. "I see you've found my old partner…"
"Why, you lose him again?"
Son-of-a-bitch.
Elliot's jaw clenches, just briefly. Olivia shoots a glance in his direction; she can practically hear his brain counting to ten.
"Actually…" he starts to respond, but she lifts her chin and he reads her like he always has. It's their dance. She's got this.
"Actually," Olivia continues, taking the lead, "I asked Detective Stabler to consult on the case. He was part of the initial investigation, if you recall."
"Right…" McGrath replies. "He and his partner. Detective Beck."
"My temporary partner…at the time. Olivia was in—"
"I know, I know, Oregon, the whole eco-terrorism thing, she was—"
"She was still my partner," Elliot returns, more adamantly than either Olivia or McGrath expects. "She was it."
The silence that follows says everything. McGrath watches the two share a look that carries weight, laced with history. He realizes quickly that he's no longer a part of the conversation.
"Got it," he mutters, stepping away to press the elevator button. "I uh…appreciate the consult."
The doors open and close, but Elliot and Olivia barely register his exit.
"What was that…" she whispers as she turns, heading toward her office.
"What was what?"
They make their way past the desks, and Olivia's grateful that most of her team has already cleared out for the morning. Still, she slips into her office, Elliot behind her, and closes the blinds before tossing her blazer on her chair. Captain Benson falls away with it and she only knows Olivia. She remembers another time, another Captain's office, and Olivia, a woman staring out through the blinds, swallowing all the truths she'd been trying to muster.
And here she is again.
"She was… I was it…"
He moves in front of her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
"You were."
"Was I?" She cocks an eyebrow and the corner of her mouth lifts, an almost-smile, but there's a bite in her question, a remnant of a decades-old grievance. She hates it as soon as it leaves her mouth, annoyed at the distant memory that's suddenly decided to disrupt her happiness. She turns toward her desk, pushes around a few papers. "I'm sorry, it's stupid, I—"
But she feels him reach for her, his palm soft against her bare arm.
"Olivia…" He waits there, the rest of his body an inch away from her, warmth radiating between his chest and her back. "You always were."
For a second, she wants to protest and remind him about his wife, about the vow and the duty and the dog-eared kind of love he'd chosen for forty years.
She grows still, her mind racing, wondering how long he'd thought about their parallel universe. If it had materialized slowly, flecks of dust collecting over time until they'd spun and stretched into something he couldn't ignore. Or if it had been like the big bang, a sudden, unmistakable surge of light and heat through a blanket of nothingness—something he'd known from day one and tried to outrun.
But when she twists to face him, she finds the only answer she needs.
They're here.
She's here, ready, and he's here whispering, always, and that's it.
The only crash Elliot knows today is Olivia's mouth against his, their bodies tangling, hands seeking, feeding an ache that had settled in their bones ages ago. She leans into it, the feeling of Elliot losing himself in her hair, her neck, his lips pressing against her skin, every inch he can see as he breathes once, and then again—
"You're it, baby."
It surprises her, the way it makes her stir. She grips at his back as they bump into her desk. It's silent except for the sounds of fingers against fabric, her desk lamp falling to the floor, and they quickly realize there's nothing more to debate.
They know.
It's always been them.
They can feel it as their embrace builds—each touch, each kiss a channel for stories they'd kept to themselves. She doesn't need to explain how she'd rehearsed her words the entire plane ride home from Oregon, ready to tell him how she'd walked through a forest one night and placed his name on a desolate star. He doesn't need to dwell on an empty kiss with a coworker he'd forgotten until today.
"You are." Elliot pauses, shifting his hands to her face. "You're my partner." Then he adds, unblinking, "Only you."
They're not talking about Dani. Perhaps, they never were. But Elliot doesn't have to convince her. He doesn't need to tell her that he's known love before but never wholeness; only by her side has he ever come close.
She believes him.
She hesitates to make comparisons but she gets it, the distinction between wife and partner in his mind. His marriage to Kathy, a union, two distinct souls bonded by history and a promise, a family, a cross. And their partnership, the alignment of fates that had brought them together over two decades before, desk to desk, a reunion of sorts. They had, from day one, been partners by definition. Pieces of an entity, fused from the start, joined by their nature. One from the beginning, long before they'd ever shaken hands.
A thought flashes—standing with Brian on a dimly lit sidewalk in front of La Diagonal. He'd been right. She'd admitted the truth, but still, she'd resisted it. She'd been able to push it away at the bar with Stone; the week's turmoil had been enough to fill the hour. The minute she'd left, the thought had come rushing back, the question of her chosen loneliness. But on the way back to her apartment, she'd remembered that she hadn't chosen it at all. It had chosen her. It had swallowed her in the aftermath of a bloody May day, creeping into the space her partner had occupied.
That night, falling asleep, her soul had heard Brian's voice, repeating, and ached for its only witness, a ghost an ocean away.
Now though, he's here. He's solid, steady in her arms, seeing her, all of her, and she feels the words coming, the ones she's said to the others but never meant. Not this way.
Her breath hitches, then calms as she touches her lips to Elliot's and finally, her soul finds its voice.
"I love you, El. So much."
And it speaks again when her mouth nears his ear and whispers softly, but insistently, "You're it."
• • •
Elliot's hers for the rest of the day.
Olivia had left a voicemail for Ayanna before meeting with McGrath and asked if she might be able to borrow a certain detective for an hour to look over an old case file. Her phone had been on silent, though, when Sergeant Bell had returned her call, telling her she'd be happy to drop Elliot off at the 1-6 after their meeting at 1PP.
"Ayanna said I could, uh… keep you today. As long as you can find a way home," Olivia smirks as she joins Elliot on the couch in her office, a stack of folders in her arms. She settles in next to him. It's a first. In twenty-four years, they've never worked a case like this, his hand finding the nape of her neck, fingertips drawing slow circles as she opens the first file.
"Maybe you can ask your girlfriend for a ride back," she teases, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek before slipping on her glasses and turning her attention to the DD5 in front of her.
"Maybe I can." He smiles back but feels his lightness turn to longing for a reason he can't quite pinpoint.
Still, they fall into a familiar patter, the back-and-forth dissection of facts and mysteries that accompanies every case.
"I would take another look at the suspect's roommate. He backed up the alibi but…I don't know, I—"
"On a gut level—"
"Something wasn't quite—"
They hear Amanda and Fin walking into the squadroom, back earlier than expected from their visit to the law firm. Elliot shifts a few inches on the couch, expecting that Olivia will dart up in a second and hustle over to her desk to grab the blazer she'd tossed there an hour before. She's relaxed, though, surprisingly unhurried in the way she closes the last folder and tosses it on the empty space next to her, stretching her arms as she gets up from the couch and faces him.
"You coming?" Her mouth turns and she gives him a look, reaching for his hand to pull him up.
"Liv, do they…" He hears voices moving closer to the door but, to his surprise, she weaves her fingers with his."Do they know?"
"They have reasonable suspicions," she returns. "I haven't exactly confirmed…or denied."
He nods and she mirrors him, coming to a silent agreement as he stands and follows her into the squadroom.
"Fin, Amanda," he greets, chuckling softly. "Good to see you."
And holding hands, he and Olivia confirm.
• • •
They take an early lunch. A working lunch—that's what she tells Fin (and herself) while she and Elliot wait for the elevator.
"Whatever you say, Captain," Fin replies, eyeing the way Elliot's carefully draping Olivia's peacoat over her shoulders as the door opens. Then there's Olivia, trying (and failing) to maintain her composure as they step inside, a restrained sort of giddiness cracking through the surface, revealing a well of pure, unapologetic joy.
"You two have fun," he adds with a wave before heading back to his desk.
Just before the doors close completely, Rollins passes by, catching a glimpse of her Captain leaning against the elevator wall, pulling the detective in for a kiss.
Under her breath, she laughs, "I'm sure they will…"
• • •
They do.
They decide to stop at the deli for lunch, but Olivia misses the turn.
"Shit, sorry."
"It's okay, Liv, we can—"
"Maybe if you weren't distracting me," Olivia reminds him, glancing down at Elliot's hand that's slowly been inching its way up her thigh.
"Fine," he chimes back, sliding his arm to the console. "I'll keep my distractions to myself."
She's quiet for a moment, but he can see her wheels turning as she takes another turn and pulls up in front of a very familiar building.
He looks over at it, then back at her.
"Your place?"
She nods slowly, shifting into park.
"I have leftovers…if you want."
"Okay…"
"And while we heat them up," she whispers, tracing his hand with her finger, "maybe we can… Maybe we can distract…each other." She unbuckles her seatbelt. "What do you think, partner?"
Elliot reaches over and cuts the ignition.
• • •
The leftovers barely make it out of the freezer.
They're still sitting in a ceramic container on the second shelf when they see Elliot opening the door to find them, then Olivia's arms reaching around his torso, pulling his shirt from his waistband.
They feel the shock of his warm hands as they slide from their icy vault. Somehow, they manage to make their way to the kitchen counter where they wait for several minutes and watch clothes slowly fall to the floor—a blazer, a suit jacket, a tie, a sleeveless blouse.
They find themselves quickly transferred into the microwave, Olivia laughing as Elliot peppers her neck with kisses while she closes the door and presses a few buttons, then START.
They turn in circles, slowly defrosting. There's a moment of stillness right in front of them, a picture they can make out through the small patterned circles in the glass—two lovers breaking from a kiss, foreheads touching, making a decision. And then, a swift movement as Olivia kisses Elliot again and he lifts her into his arms and out of sight.
The microwave's hum almost drowns out the sounds emerging from the bedroom around the corner; still, a few words cut through the din. Their names, over and over, and fuck and yes and, before the lingering quiet, I love you, from both.
The leftovers stay there, forgotten. They see Elliot one more time, buttoning his shirt and gathering clothes from the kitchen floor.
They hear him talking as he leaves again—got your blazer, baby—followed by two sets of footsteps moving quickly down the hallway, a door in the distance opening and closing, the click of a lock.
Hours later, when Olivia returns from work and remembers them, she opens the microwave and scrapes the cold no-longer-crispy chicken and lemon orzo from the plate into the trash.
There, next to some paper towels and orange peels from Noah's breakfast, they hear another voice and realize Olivia's not alone.
Elliot's home, too.
• • •
He finds the sweater sticking out under her pillow.
He hadn't noticed it earlier. Granted, he hadn't noticed much of anything except her —his whole world, Olivia, her body, her heart, inseparable from his own.
But here it is, scrunched up near the headboard while he's changing the sheets, the blue cashmere sweater she'd worn the first time they'd kissed. The one that's traveled back and forth from Long Island City to Manhattan twice, and apparently has found a place to stay.
He holds it behind his back and walks into the kitchen where Olivia's just started the dishwasher.
They hadn't talked about him staying tonight. The day had just evolved after their lunchtime excursion. A quick ride to the deli to pick up sandwiches that they'd shared in the car before heading back to the precinct. An afternoon of knowing glances across the room while they worked the case with the rest of the squad. A ride back to her place, a post-work shower full of distractions . A somewhat hodge-podge pasta dish that Elliot had prepared while Olivia had picked up Noah from his musical rehearsal. Ice cream and homework, video games and goodnights to her son, and now, dishes and sheets.
"Found something," he says quietly as he moves behind her, wrapping the sweater's sleeves around her waist.
"Oh, I…" she starts, just a little embarrassed. "I was just…"
"Cuddling with my shirt, Benson?"
"Your shirt?"
He gently ties the sleeves into a knot and turns her to face him.
"My mistake," he laughs and she rests her head on his shoulder, burrowing her arms inside the hoodie she'd given him after their shower (along with a few other borrowed relics).
"It's okay…" she says quietly, closing her eyes. "Don't think I need it anymore, actually."
She's warm against him, radiating love and heat, and he swears he can feel her heart beating through the threadbare NYPD t-shirt covering his chest.
"No?"
She smiles and gives him a squeeze.
"No," she replies softly. He gets it. There's no need to pass tokens anymore—the sweatshirts and favorite pencils, the coffee mugs and candy bars, small reminders of a certain comfort they could never take home. It's all here now, an intangible peace within and between them, the universe's recompense for souls laid bare.
"But," she adds with a playful nudge, "I think I'll keep it anyway."
She settles against him again and they stay just like that for longer than they realize, holding each other, rocking slowly back and forth, the dishwasher churning behind them.
Olivia does keep the sweater.
She wears it when she and Elliot take Noah trick-or-treating nearly two weeks later, her son clad in a carrot costume that Bernie had resurrected from decades in storage.
It's her shirt of choice when the rest of the family heads to bed after their first Christmas together. When it's just the two of them curled up on the couch, falling asleep to the sound of a toy train circling the tree and the spatter of snowflakes on Elliot's patio window.
The sweater soon finds a new home in another drawer when she empties one for Elliot, but returns to its spot a few months later when the movers haul his dresser into their room.
Every free weekend in the summer, she packs it when they head to the beach house. She wears on cool nights by the water when Elliot takes her to the jetty and kisses her as long as the tide allows.
It's at the top of the clean laundry pile when she reaches for it on a crisp fall Sunday and sees the ring hidden underneath.
It's in her arms when she turns around and finds Elliot on one knee, asking for a lifetime.
And it's happy tears that fall on its fabric when she tells her partner—
Yes.
COMPLETE