A/N: for the purposes of this fic, we are going to proceed as if all of oc s1/svu s22 happened as we saw it on screen. This fic picks up where the Albanian arc would have been, just without Elliot going undercover. That will become more clear as we proceed, I just wanted y'all to have that info from the jump.


June 4, 2021

Things were different after the wedding. Or the not-wedding, that party Fin and Phoebe had thrown to celebrate their decision to not get hitched, which Elliot didn't really understand. They'd already done the hard part, found the venue and hired the caterers and moved in with each other; why not exchange the rings? He was well aware he wasn't entirely unbiased on that score, though, and kept his mouth shut, and drank their wine, and tried to relax in the company of his friends.

That was the moment things began to shift. The cat-and-mouse game with Wheatley had come to an end, and the man was going to be held accountable for what he'd done to Kathy, and Angela was gonna live. Elliot's hands were steadier, and his family had decided he was safe for Eli to be around again, and he'd signed a lease on a new place in Long Island City. He'd talked to Liv, at the wedding, seen her smile, heard the word partners exhaled with every breath she took, and with all that other shit settled he felt like he could see her, finally. The haze that had clouded his vision from the moment the car exploded had at long last faded away, and he could see the wreckage the explosion had left in its wake. Not just Kathy dead, not just Wheatley's chaos, not just Elliot's family in tatters, but Liv, busted and bruised, right in the middle of everything.

Things were different now.

I love you.

He'd said it and he couldn't take it back and he didn't really want to. What he felt for Liv, it had to be love, because there wasn't another word for it, wasn't a single word in the Oxford English Dictionary big enough to encompass the impact she'd had on his heart. The way she guided him, reassured him, comforted him, confronted him, the way he longed for her, the way he felt more himself when she was near than he ever did without her, the way he wanted, so badly, to see her smile, the ache he felt each time he remembered the many ways in which he'd wronged her, the desperation he felt to right those wrongs; all of it, all of it was love. He was too broken to romance her and she'd never accept him, anyway, but he loved her, still. Friends loved one another, didn't they? Friends cared for one another. He would love her that way, if she'd let him.

The night of the wedding they'd talked for ages, talked until almost everyone else had left and the waitstaff was trying to move them along, and they'd had so much left to say that Liv called him from the car, wanting to keep right on talking. But then Wheatley, the prick, had ordered her car run off the road, and she'd been hurt, and Elliot had wanted to go to her, he really had, but he'd wanted to prove that Wheatley was responsible more, and for a few days he lost himself in the case, so busy trying to find justice for Olivia he hadn't had time to go and see her. He'd told himself he was more good to her catching the bastard who'd hurt her than mooning over her while she was injured - and she'd always been a terrible patient, had never wanted anyone treating her like she was fragile - but he had no leads, and Bell had sent him home, and Maureen wasn't bringing Eli and his stuff to Long Island City until Saturday, and it was Friday night, and he was alone, and Olivia was hurt, and he had no sooner walked in the door of his half-empty apartment than he was walking right back out it again, on his way to her.

It was what he used to do, in the old days. Drop by unannounced, because he knew if he called she'd lie and tell him she was fine even if she wasn't, and if he was already at her door she'd let him in. Surely, he thought, she'd let him in.

She's had a couple of relationships, Fin had told him. Had. Past tense, like they were over and done with. One was pretty solid, Fin had told him. Was, and was no longer, Elliot thought. Yeah, she had kids, but probably she didn't have a man, and probably she needed some help, laid up with a bad ankle and two kids to worry about, and she'd been to his house plenty of times when his kids were home, and they'd talked at the wedding, and we're friends, aren't we? He asked himself as he drove along. Friends checked in on each other.

Friends also didn't go radio silent for ten years and then turn up and expect everything to be the way it used to be, but how the fuck was Elliot supposed to fix this, supposed to make up for the long years of his absence and all the times he'd not been there when she needed him, if he wasn't there for her now? He had to start somewhere, didn't he?

Worst comes to worst, he told himself as he drove, I'll just leave.

It hadn't been hard to find her address - he was a cop, after all - and all he had to do was flash his badge at the doorman and the guy let him up without a word. Probably, Elliot thought, he was used to a parade of cops making their way up to Olivia's floor.

Shit, maybe one of the guys she'd dated had been a cop. Maybe a few of them had been. Who else would she date with any seriousness? Where else would she meet a guy, and who else would ever understand her? Jesus, what if it was someone he knew?

That was one of the things he'd ask her tonight, he decided. First he'd make sure that she and the kids had something to eat, and order pizza if they didn't. Then he'd ask about the kids, their names, what they were like, if she loved being a mom as much as he thought she did. Then he'd ask about the men.

It seemed like a good plan.

He knocked sharply on her door when he reached it, and then stood back with his hands tucked in his pockets, prepared to wait a while since she'd have to hobble to open the door on her crutches. He'd come straight here, hadn't even bothered to change, was still wearing most of his suit - vest and shirt and trousers, belt and gun and boots, badge and cufflinks - but he'd left his tie and his jacket in the car. Maybe he could take the vest off, once he got inside, maybe -

The door swung open, much sooner than he expected, and he rocked back on his heels as the sight before him stunned him like a fucking electric shock. Nothing could have prepared him for this; no one had said anything to make him even suspect that this was a possibility, and now that he was faced with the hard reality of it he fumbled for a moment, desperately searching for some way to right himself, to anchor himself, to keep himself from falling apart.

"Cassidy?" he managed to choke the word out, his voice hoarse and his eyes suddenly feeling too big for his head.

It was Brian fucking Cassidy, answering the door to Olivia's apartment. Brian Cassidy, barefoot, wearing a frilly fucking apron over sweatpants and a t-shirt, with a dishrag flung over his shoulder. Elliot could smell supper on the stove, could just catch a glimpse of the apartment over Cassidy's shoulder, the walls pristine white, the living room and inviting in the glow of lamplight, the little boy sitting cross-legged on the floor by the sofa coloring in a coloring book. It was Cassidy, comfortable in Olivia's home, apparently interrupted in the middle of cooking dinner, standing there like he belonged there, and Elliot was himself the interloper, the trespasser.

Brian fucking Cassidy. His hair was close cropped, probably to hide the fact that it was going grey, and his face was weathered, lined. He was older now, and that was hard to reckon with because the Cassidy that Elliot remembered had been young and dumb and sweet and naive, and this man looked grim, and inexplicably hard. There had been a lightness to Cassidy, all those years ago, something playful and gentle and almost innocent, that was nowhere to be found now, and Elliot couldn't understand it. Couldn't understand any of this, why Cassidy was here or what had happened to change him so profoundly or what the fuck Elliot was supposed to do now that Cassidy had caught him turning up at Olivia's door unannounced.

"Holy shit," Cassidy said. He looked like he'd seen a ghost. And it was funny, because they'd parted on good terms, because they'd always been friendly, because Elliot had been something of a mentor to him, but Cassidy didn't seem at all happy to see him, didn't even bother reaching out to shake his hand. Just stood there, staring at him, like he was as shaken by Elliot's appearance in the doorway as Elliot was by his.

"That's a bad word, daddy," a new voice said accusingly, and Elliot's eyes snapped down, and he watched in dawning horror as a little girl - Olivia's little girl - stepped into view. She looked to be about eight, a skinny little thing with her mother's big dark eyes, her mother's thick dark hair, her mouth pulled into the same mistrustful pout Elliot had seen on Olivia's face a million times. That little girl, she was Olivia's daughter, and she was calling Cassidy daddy.

Elliot's stomach twisted unpleasantly, and he couldn't seem to take his eyes off that little girl.

"I know, baby," Cassidy said sheepishly.

"You gotta put a dollar in the jar." She caught her little hands on her little hips, looking for all the world like Olivia when she was pissed off, and Elliot could hardly breathe, looking at her.

"I will," Cassidy said, sounding somehow cowed by her.

How the fuck had this happened? That's what Elliot couldn't wrap his head around. The last time he'd seen Cassidy the man had been sniping at Liv after she broke his heart, after she fucked him and told him she didn't want to do it again. At the time Elliot had wondered why she'd let him take her to bed in the first place, when she was too smart for him, too refined for him - too good for him. It hadn't made any sense and he'd figured maybe Liv was just scratching an itch with the nearest warm body but now he knew she'd had kids with him. How had they reconnected? And why did she go back to a man she'd never wanted in the first place?

"Who's that?" the little girl asked, looking up at Elliot with her hands still on her hips, like a club bouncer, albeit one who wasn't quite four feet tall. .

"A friend," Cassidy said in response to his daughter's question. His daughter. Jesus. Cassidy's eyes flicked back to Elliot, something knowing in his gaze.

"I don't like him," the girl said, eyeing Elliot warily.

A choked, unpleasant sort of laugh bubbled up out of the back of Elliot's throat. He'd been so eager to get here, to see Olivia, so certain that he was doing the right thing, that his presence here would be good for them, but this hope, this little dream, had turned into the most awkward sort of nightmare, and he found himself wishing the ground would just swallow him up right there.

"Bri? Who is it?" Olivia's voice called out from deeper in the apartment.

"I should go," Elliot said softly to Cassidy, already stepping back. Though he didn't understand how it was plain that Olivia and Brian were a family, and there was no room in that family for Elliot, and the best thing for all of them, he thought, would be for him to leave right now, before things got any more uncomfortable for any of them. Surely Cassidy would let him go, he thought, wouldn't want to watch Elliot intruding on the life Cassidy had built with Olivia. If Elliot had been in his shoes, he would've closed the door already.

Cassidy didn't, though. Cassidy grinned.

"It's Stabler!" he called to Olivia.

Shit.