Law and Order: SVU is the intellectual property of Dick Wolf. The use of the characters, settings, and plotlines is not malicious. This is a work of fiction.
"Is that even a word?" she asked, staring at the wooden tiles on the board in front of her. "I don't..no, El, that's not a word!"
He rolled his eyes, laughing, and shook his head as he took away the squared-off letters. "It could be a word," he mused with a shrug. "Do you know all the words in the entire English language?"
"No, but I know a lot more than you, I guarantee you that. "Alfine' is definitely not a word." She gave him a narrow-eyed smirk and put her own tiles down on the board. 'Abdicate, however, is a word, and that, my friend, is all seven tiles, double-word score, that's twenty-six points. I just kicked your ass for the second time, Stabler!"
He chuckled and then rested his head on his right hand, staring at her with a longing look in his eyes. "I don't want to play games anymore," he said with a sigh.
"Game," she said, not looking at him, putting the tiles back into the velvet bag. "They only left us this one."
"Not...not just Scrabble," he said, clearing his throat. He scooted closer to her and looked directly into her eyes. "In general. I don't want to fuck around anymore, here. I think...we're stuck here, alone. We should...no, uh, we need to talk." He watched the color drain from her face as the words left his mouth. He saw her drop the Scrabble box onto the table and turn, slowly, toward him, and he knew the look on her face, the emotion in her eyes. It was something he'd seen often, and hated every time. "It's not..." he paused and reached for her hand. "It's not bad, okay? Well, at least, I hope not."
She dropped her eyes to his hand, gripping hers, and she watched his thumb move slowly over the side of her ring finger, seeing it before she felt it. It sent shivers up her spine. "What...what do we have to talk about?"
"I think you already know," he whispered. "It's funny, being here, like this." He looked around the large living room, taking in the unexpected homeyness of the safe-house to which they'd been relegated. "Before all this shit happened, I...I was gonna ask if I could crash at your place for a while. Give myself some distance from Kathy while I, uh, figure out how to be single again." He raised his eyebrows and sighed, something caught between relieved and dejected. "I wanted to spend a few nights with you, talk, watch awful movies and eat bad Chinese food." He shrugged. "Guess I get to spend my nights with you, anyway." He laughed softly and then cleared his throat, running his fingers along the side of her hand again. He looked into her eyes and his heart jerked. "What's happening, here?"
She gave a one-shoulder shrug, afraid to speak. She felt his hand still caressing hers, and the heat that rose in her body told her she knew exactly what was happening.
"If I had to say..." he stopped to swallow and lick his teeth, his mouth was suddenly dry and throat scratchy, "Yeah, I think it was our first case together. I watched you chase and tackle a man twice your size, bring him to his fucking knees and make him cry for his mommy...and when we found that little boy...you smiled at him, this incredibly warm, loving smile, and you became this...soft, nurturing..." he stopped again. "You held him and calmed him down, you had him laughing in minutes, and that's when. Definitely. You know, that has always amazed me. How you go from zero to sixty in seconds and how one minute you're ready, willing, and able to kill a grown man with your bare hands and the next you're the sweetest, most delicate woman...that I want protect and...love...for the rest of my life."
She gasped, softly but noticeably, and it was her hand that tightened around his this time. "That's when...what?" she asked, her heart pounding hard against her chest.
"That's when I knew I was falling in love with you," he told her, "And there wasn't a single, fucking thing I could do about it." He stood up, holding her hand, and tugged gently, coaxing her to her feet. He let out a relieved breath and moved with her toward the couch. He made sure she was comfortable before sitting beside her, his hand still clutching hers. "When did you know?"
"Know what?" she asked fast, her eyes darting around the room, avoiding meeting his.
He didn't even blink. He simply said, "Liv?"
She took a deep breath and slowly let her eyes slide in his direction. "This is...I mean, should we really be talking about this? Out loud?"
"We almost died," he told her with wide eyes. "Twice. Our first instinct was to save each other, and God, damn it, that means something!" He bit his lip and shook his head. "If this son-of-a-bitch gets close again, or if he...if he succeeds...I want this out, in the open. I want you to know." He leaned closer to her. "I want you to hear it, from me, and know how much I mean it." He moved even closer, his heavy breath against her lips, his pulse loud in his ears. "I love you."
Her world shattered, crumbled beneath her feet. She couldn't feel anything except freezing cold tingles running through her entire body. The words she'd always heard him say in her dreams, but always assumed she'd never really hear, had just come out of his mouth. His perfect, kissable mouth. She was staring, and she knew it, but she couldn't look away, even if she wanted to. She was absolutely petrified, in every sense of the word.
He let go of her hand, seeing the genuine fear in her eyes. "I'm not...I mean, I thought that..." he furrowed his brow. "Was I wrong?"
To prove to him, and maybe more to herself, that she was still alive and fully conscious, she shook her head adamantly. The expression on her face must have still been blank, though, because she could see pure confusion filling every pore of his face. "No," she croaked out, hoping to clarify.
"Okay," he breathed, inching closer to her. "Why do you look like I just told you I was a serial killer?"
She let out a trembling breath. "That was just...that was heavy, El. You gotta give me a minute or two to..." she looked up at him with a squint and perplexed smirk. "Did you really just tell me..."
"That I love you," he repeated. cutting her off, "Yes." He heaved another sigh and moved his right hand to rest on her knee. He squeezed lightly, over and over, mimicking the rhythm of his heartbeat. "You have to believe me when I tell you...I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't want to spend the last five years loving someone I couldn't have...not loving my wife...knowing that no matter what decision I made, someone would get hurt, and knowing...knowing it would probably be me."
"You?" she questioned, dropping her hand over his, stopping his pulsing squeezes.
He nodded, slowly blinking, his forehead wrinkling. "I thought...up until a few months ago, anyway...that there was no way that you would ever...could ever..." he didn't want to sound ridiculous. He scraped his teeth along his lip and twisted his mouth into as confident a grin as he could muster. "As incredibly attractive and witty as I am, I thought you'd rather be with, I don't know, that federal fuckwad."
She couldn't help laughing, not only at his glorious disdain for Agent Porter, but at the adorable and slightly embarrassed expression on his face that he tried so desperately to hide with an arrogant smile. "What you said to me this morning, in the squad room...that it was always me?" She exhaled and looked into his eyes, feeling tightness creep into her chest. "Well, um...I guess, what I'm trying to say, here, is, uh, for me? It's always been you."
He made a face like Ralphie finally getting his Red-Ryder BB Gun for Christmas. He bent his head and shifted forward, but something stopped him. "Back to the first question," he said, grinning. "When did you know?"
She took a breath. Up until this moment, she hadn't even fully admitted it to herself. "Three weeks in," she said. "Uh, you...we had that horrible case, the flight attendant? Cragen benched me, he didn't understand why I was talking it so personally. But you...you knew, and you did everything you could to get me back on the case with you. You...you told Cragen. I mean, of course, he knew, but you really went in on him for it." She swallowed. "You came to my place that night, with a six-pack of beer and a pizza, and you told me he benched you, too." She laughed. "That night, the way we just...fell into this understanding that, no matter what, we'd always put each other first."
"Always," he said, nodding. "That's never gonna change."
She rubbed her eyes a bit and took another breath. "I never had someone go to bat for me the way you did, then, and...though I love watching you beat the shit out of people, and seeing the way you change when you're around your kids, I got to see this third side of you that night...one that maybe you didn't want me to see, but it made me realize..."
He waited with baited breath, mentally begging her to speak again, say it, tell him.
"It made me realize I was...in love with you," she barely whispered. She paled as soon as the words left her mouth.
He knew if he kissed her, at this moment, the way he wanted so badly to, he'd ruin his chances with her entirely. He thought for a moment, knowing that if he screwed things up, right off the bat, she'd never forgive him. Hell, he'd never forgive himself, either. He reached up and brushed the back of his hand against her cheek, and then he pushed her hair behind her ear. "That side of me you think I didn't want you to see? The only one who gets to see it is you...just you."
"Really?" she asked, laughing through the last of her tears. "I find that hard to believe."
"It's true," he said, smiling at her. "Whenever something happened, at home, at work, if I had an issue with the kids, or if Tucker was up my ass...it's always been you, who I run to, to make it all...just...go away. When I need to process something, you're the one I talk things out with, and you're the one that clears everything up. When I'm having a shitty day, you smile and suddenly it's all better. So, you see, Liv? I'm really...me...when I'm with you."
Heat filled her face, reddening her cheeks, but she smiled. She felt almost weightless, moving closer to him, and she turned his hand over and linked her fingers through his. "You already know. You're the only one who really gets to see me, too. At my best, at my worst...you're my family, El. I don't...I don't have anyone else." She sighed and turned her eyes up at him. "For years, I thought you and Kathy were falling apart because of me, because I got too close. I didn't have a family, so I imposed on yours, and I thought..."
"Olivia Benson," he cut her off, his voice dominate and his eyes narrow. He squeezed her hand tight. "You were never, ever an imposition. Not for me, my family, anyone. You never were, and you never will be."
She chuckled at his severity, but she smiled and nodded gently. "It felt like it, sometimes. Kathy and her dirty looks, questions I wasn't sure why your kids were asking..."
"None of that was because of you," he interrupted again, shaking his head with a soft, frustrated grunt. "Kathy...she always knew there was more than friendship between me and you, and she was jealous. Very. With good reason, obviously. The kids...well, they're my kids, so of course, they saw right through me, and figured out I had this, uh, raging crush on you, as they like to put it." He laughed. "They asked you inappropriate questions to dig up the real dirt on you, figure out what I'd be getting myself into. They weren't asking to hurt you, they were asking to..."
"Protect you," she said, nodding. "I get that, now." She blinked once and was suddenly hit with the full weight of the tension of the day, the reality of their situation, and the gravity of what he'd been saying to her. She didn't even realize she was crying until she felt wetness slip down her cheeks.
Wordlessly, he brushed away her tears, pressed his forehead to hers, and spent a few moments just breathing her in, syncing his heartbeat with hers. "We're okay," he said, a simple statement that held so much power and substance. It meant so many things, and nothing, all at once.
"What happened, El?" she asked, her voice wavering as she shook slightly. She moved a bit, an inch closer, but it seemed to close a much wider gap.
He wrapped his arms around her, his head still resting against hers, and he asked, "With what?"
"Kathy," she said before she could stop herself. "And don't tell me some bullshit about growing apart, or irreconcilable differences, okay? I want the truth." She bit her lip and raised her head, giving him a good, strong stare. Her red eyes leaked slowly and she sniffled again. "There's something I need to do, that I've been needing to do for...for so long, especially today, and I can't do it unless I know. I...I deserve the truth, Elliot."
He flinched at the use of his full first name, which was normally reserved for importance or discord when it passed between them. "You do," he agreed. "You always do. And with me, you get it, you know that, don't you? I can't lie to you."
She nodded and tilted her head. "So tell me."
He let out a long, hard breath, twisted to his left a bit, and slumped backward into the cushions of the couch. "I can't lie to you," he said again, "But God, damn it, Liv, I was so good at lying to her."
Peace and Love
Jo
MarchCommaJo on Twitter