I forgot to mention that in this universe ep "Fault" happened, but Olivia never left. So Dani Beck was never Elliot's partner.
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Maybe she was just imagining it, but when Elliot answered, his uncertain voice had taken on a new, relieved tone.
"I'd love to."
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Shadows were dancing on Olivia's bedroom walls as she tossed and turned in her bed. She was exhausted, but her body did not give her peace; her thoughts were circling like an unstoppable disc on a record player, and she was alternately cold and alternately hot. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see in her mind Mr. Reed's eyes gleaming with lust, and she could hear his heavy breathing in her ears.
The situation was not improved at all by the knowledge that their task was not yet completed, far from it. Unless they found new leads or evidence of the human trafficking ring, they would have no choice but to continue their nights at the club.
In addition to this, she couldn't close her mind to the fact that dangerous undercover cases usually became more dangerous the longer they lasted. These were dangerous people who knew they were involved in a very serious crime and that if they were caught, they would lose everything. That's why the risks increased the deeper they got into the group's activities.
The more information they got, the thinner ice they would be on.
Sighing restlessly, Olivia turned over in her bed again. The inexplicable peace that Elliot had brought with him had also left with him when he had closed the door to her apartment. It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to stay the night, "just in case". He had been willing to sleep on the couch with only his suit jacket as his blanket, and he had promised to leave before she would wake up in the morning.
But she had driven him away herself.
It hadn't been that she had wanted him to leave, quite the opposite. Every cell in her had screamed for him to stay, to bring peace to her nervous heart, to drive away Mr. Reed, who had remained inside her head like an oppressive breath. She would have liked to feel his arms around her, to feel the safety radiating from him, to feel how it grounded her.
And no matter how much she tried to deny her feelings, to convince herself that it wasn't appropriate, that wasn't the root of why she kept driving him away time after time.
It was because of fear.
She wasn't sure how long it had been there. Maybe it had only been there a while, maybe it had been there since the day she had first met Elliot.
But she had been forced to face it for the first time a few months ago when they had been chasing Gitano.
Fear was no stranger to her. Even as a child, she had been hiding under her bed when her mother had come home drunk and enraged, throwing things around the apartment. She had been scared countless times at work, scared for herself, Elliot and her colleagues. The longer she had been working at SVU, the more her eyes had opened to the evil in the world. Anything can happen, and it can all be over in the blink of an eye.
But this fear was something she hadn't felt before. It was something oppressive and paralyzing, something that had struck her consciousness with its full force when she had been pointing her gun at Gitano, who had been threatening Elliot.
It was the same fear that had made her change the unit, the same one that had made her push Elliot away from her.
It was the fear of losing.
When she had been forced to face a situation where she had had to choose between an innocent child and Elliot, she had finally, after all these years, realized that she loved him. And not just that she loved him like a friend, but that she loved him in a way the realization of which had rocked her world. Her love for Elliot was so deep, so primal, he was the pillar of her life, he was the one she had built her life on.
And realizing this had scared the hell out of her.
And after that, every thought of losing him had made her even more convinced that it couldn't happen. It wasn't even an option. "It's just... It was too complicated."
It wasn't complicated, actually it was one of the simplest things in her life. When she had finally realized Elliot's worth in her life, nothing had felt so certain and permanent before. But all the other things around it made it complicated.
Because there was too much at stake. Her heart knew what it wanted, and since Elliot and Kathy had divorced, it had gotten stronger by the day. Deep down, she knew there was a possibility. She could have Elliot.
But at the same time, there was also the possibility that she could lose him. If she opened her heart, told him she loved him and somehow they would screw it up, there would be no going back. Hell, she didn't even know if her partner felt the same. It could ruin their friendship, their partnership, it would break the most important pillar of her life, and she knew what it would do to her.
It would break her too.
So, instead of opening her heart, after the Gitano incident, she had closed it, started to build a protective wall around it, to suppress her feelings, because of which she could at worst lose everything.
But when the dark apartment and the specter of Mr. Reed's touch on her skin made the protective wall around her heart crack and wish things were different, she closed her eyes, pulled the blanket tighter, and imagining Elliot's warm body against hers, imagining his breath in her hair, she finally drifted into a restless sleep.
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Olivia woke up to a knock on the door. She grimaced as she felt more tired than the evening, if possible. Sighing, she got out of bed and shivered as the cool air of the apartment surrounded her body. Without glancing at the clock, she strained her ears, and when there was another knock on the door, the previous evening came back to her mind, and she froze in place.
It can't be.
But then her cop instincts took over, and with her heart pounding furiously, she picked up the first thing she saw. With a vase in her hand, she walked quietly to the door along the walls and, holding her breath, leaned to peer through the peephole. However, she didn't make it that far, because a shout from behind the door scared her to her core, and she almost dropped the vase.
"Open up!"
Elliot.
She let the air out of her lungs, put the vase on the table and peeked through the peephole to be sure. Then she opened the door.
"She's alive," Fin, who was waiting behind the door with Elliot, said with a huff, raised his hands over his head and turned his back to them. Elliot, on the other hand, stood still, staring at Olivia, blue eyes flaring oddly, and she frowned in astonishment.
"What's wrong? What are you doing here?" She asked, raising her hand to rub her eyes, but then Elliot grabbed her shoulders and looked at her in a way that scared her. "Has something happened?"
"Where the hell have you been?!" He exclaimed. "Why don't you answer calls or messages?!"
Olivia blinked. "Sorry, I had muted it and I forgot it. What time is it?"
"It's almost 12 pm, Liv," grunted Fin. "Have you muted your alarm clock too?"
12 pm? How can it be 12 pm?!
"What?!" Olivia asked in a stifled voice. "Are you serious?!"
Shit. Shit shit shit….
"We damn right are serious," Elliot's grip on her shoulders was still strong, and it felt like it was still tightening. "The whole precinct is freaking out, Cragen would tear her hair out if he had any, everyone thought…" And then to Olivia's surprise, his voice broke, and he pulled her into his arms. Over his shoulder she saw a surprised Fin, but suddenly she felt that nothing else mattered anymore. Elliot's embrace was like magic, causing an inexplicable feeling of warmth and peace to flow into her every cell like a warm breath.
"I'm sorry, I…" She started, but then Elliot's arms around her tightened.
"Do you have any idea how worried we were?" His voice was stifled. "The night before, the head of the human trafficking group lays his eyes on you, and the next morning there's just radio silence, you don't come to work, you don't answer the phone. I thought…"
"I'm sorry, El, I really am," she whispered again. "I must have forgotten to turn on the alarm last night."
Then Elliot loosened his grip, and when he looked deep into her eyes for a moment, her legs suddenly started to felt like jelly.
What's wrong with me?!
But then Fin's voice broke the spell, causing Elliot to turn his head and bring Olivia back to reality:
"Do you want to die in a nice or bad way? Because the longer this takes, the slower and more painfully Cragen will kill you."