June 4, 2021
"They're good kids," Elliot said fondly, watching from his vantage point by the kitchen sink as Noah and Mia played together in the living room. It looked like they were playing with Legos, but they weren't just stacking the pieces at random; those kids were building something, with purpose, and a great deal of giggling.
"Yeah, I think I'll keep 'em," Liv said, grinning.
They'd made it through the meal in one piece; Mia and Noah were both chatty little things, albeit in very different ways, and Liv was so gentle with them, and it had been strange but nice, getting to know her kids, getting to spend this time with them. As soon as they were finished eating the pair of them had begged to be allowed to go play and Liv had graciously let them, and Elliot had insisted that she stay in her chair, had fetched a pillow from the couch so she could prop up her foot and watch him while he did the dishes, of which there seemed to him to be an inordinate amount. Cassidy must have used every spoon and bowl and pan in the whole fucking kitchen while he was making dinner, but Elliot couldn't curse him for that. Dinner had been delicious, and the more dishes he had to wash now the longer he could stay here, warm and satisfied, with Liv.
"I don't think Mia likes me too much," Elliot confessed, returning his attention to the pot he was supposed to be scrubbing.
"Don't take it personally," Liv assured him. "Mia doesn't like anybody. When she was a baby she'd cry when anybody but me or Brian held her. The only way the daycare people could keep her calm was to keep Noah in her line of sight."
"Twins," Elliot murmured sagely. "We had to let Dickie and Lizzie sleep in the same crib. They hated being separated."
Behind him he heard a rustling sound, and glanced over his shoulder in time to see Liv shifting a little uncomfortably in her seat.
"Yeah, they're not actually twins," she said, looking somehow sheepish. "Noah's almost a whole year older, he's just always been small for his age."
Two kids, barely a year apart. Somehow that was more shocking to Elliot than the kids being twins; if Liv had had two babies that close together it must have meant that she and Cassidy couldn't keep their hands off each other, even when Noah was an infant. Elliot knew exactly how exhausting newborns were, especially the first baby, when parents didn't quite know what they were doing yet and were discovering it all for the very first time. But even sleepless and worried as new parents Liv and Cassidy had found the time to make another baby. An image of Liv, pregnant, with Noah on her hip, flitted through Elliot's mind, and he wasn't proud of the way it made him feel, thinking about her like that. He felt it, just the same.
"You didn't waste any time, did you," he murmured, staring resolutely at the pan and trying not to think of how Liv might have looked pregnant, how beautiful she must have been, how badly he wished he'd had the chance to see it, how much he hated himself for missing it.
"It's a long story," was all she said, and he thought that was kinda weird, that the story of Mia's conception was a long one, when really most babies got made the same way and it shouldn't have taken too long to explain. Elliot had five kids himself, and every one of them had been an accident, and Liv knew that, so why was she so reticent to tell him her own story? There were parts of her, he thought, parts of her story he still didn't have access to, wouldn't have access to until she trusted him again, really trusted him. He was working on that.
"It's nice," he said. "Them being so close together. They'll always have each other."
It was something he'd regretted about Eli. Katie and Mo were a few years apart but once Katie had started school the years started to matter a little less, and the girls had always had each other's backs, looked out for one another, understood one another, the way sisters will, even when they fought. Dickie and Lizzie had come into the world together, so even though there was a bigger gap between the twins and Katie they weren't alone, either. Eli, though, Eli was so much younger than all his siblings, and Elliot and Kathy had taken him off to Rome and he'd never really had the chance to spend as much time with the older kids as Elliot wished. In many ways Eli was an only child, Dickie and Lizzie and Katie and Mo more like doting aunts and uncle than like siblings. It made Eli lonely now, Elliot knew; the big kids looked out for him, but they were so different, and Eli hadn't really known them. Not until he moved in with Mo, and just thinking about that made Elliot's stomach twist. His kids hadn't trusted him, and Maureen had been forced to play mother to her little brother, to protect him in a time when she needed someone to look after her. It wasn't fair, what had been done to his family, what he had done to his family, but Eli was coming home, and Elliot was determined to put things right.
"Yeah," Liv said softly, sadly. "Simon told me once that he'd always wanted a big sister. And I always wished I'd had someone. I always wished I wasn't alone. We didn't really get the chance to…but Mia and Noah have each other, and that's everything to me."
Jesus, this conversation had turned maudlin. Elliot knew, now, that Liv's brother had died a year or so before, that they'd fallen out with each other and Simon had overdosed in some shitty motel all alone, and it broke his heart, really it did, thinking about how bad Liv had wanted a family, and what family had done to her. He could remember it so clearly, the day he found out who Simon was, the way Liv reacted to the news she had a brother, the way she put her career, her freedom on the line to help him when she knew nothing at all about him. Simon was her brother, and that had been enough to make Liv protect him fiercely, love him deeply, and she'd lost him anyway. It was good, Elliot thought, that she had the kids now, that she had Cassidy - in whatever fucking capacity, he still wasn't clear on that, because Brian went home to his own place but he cooked Liv dinner and called her babe and kissed her cheek - because no one deserved family more than she did.
They were quiet for a while, Elliot washing the dishes and Liv just watching, letting their minds wander through a tangled brush of memories and regrets and quiet hopes, and it was good. It was nice, being in her home, doing something normal, feeling like they were friends again. The wedding had patched something up between them, marked the first time they'd been able to talk without feeling like the whole goddamn world hung in the balance, and this felt like a continuation of that. Like the pair of them were slowly, gradually, slotting back into place.
Elliot was nearly done with the dishes when he heard the sound of little feet rushing up behind him, and he turned to watch as Mia approached her mother, paying him no mind.
"Mommy, I'm going to bed," Mia announced.
It wasn't really bed time, Elliot thought, was just after 7:30 on a Friday night, and what eight year old wanted to go to bed so early?
"Ok, baby," Olivia said easily. "Go take your medicine and brush your teeth." She caught hold of her daughter, pulled her into a fond embrace, kissed her forehead once, gently. "I love you."
What medicine? He wondered. He took note of the command at once, and it troubled him, just a little. Mia looked like a healthy kid; what did she need medicine for? Was she just getting over something, taking the last few antibiotics in the pack, or was it something else? God, he hoped she wasn't sick, really sick. Back in the day Liv had wanted a baby so much and that dream had finally come true and he wanted it to be perfect for her. She deserved perfect, he thought, and Mia did, too.
"Love you, too," Mia said, and then she was scampering off, and Liv caught El looking after her.
"She's been putting herself to bed since she was four," Liv said, no doubt having taken note of his curious expression, though she didn't seem to grasp the real reason for it. "We tried to fight it for a while but she's stubborn."
"Can't imagine where she gets that from," Elliot murmured.
"You calling me stubborn?"
"Well, I know Cassidy is."
Liv hummed, and did not disagree.
"How did that happen, anyway?" he asked carefully. "You and Cassidy."
"You really wanna do this now, El?"
Maybe she had a point there. Maybe he shouldn't ask. Dinner had gone so well, and they were getting along, and Liv had let him meet her kids, and she hadn't looked sad once, not once, the way she'd looked sad since the moment he returned. Maybe if he pressed the issue now he'd ruin the good rapport they'd only started to rebuild. But if he didn't ask now, when was he gonna? He'd come here tonight to look after her, to prove to her that he would be there for her when she needed him, and he knew he owed it to her, to ask about her life while he was gone, to hear her, to listen, to learn all the things he didn't know, to get to know the person she was now, and not just the one she once had been.
"I wanna know what I missed," he said, very softly. And he did want to know, Jesus, he wanted to know, but he'd run out of dishes to wash and one of Liv's kids was already going to bed and the other was probably gonna follow her soon and this would be a perfect opportunity for Liv to kick him out on his ass.
"I think we need wine for this," she said. "There's a good bottle of red on top of the fridge. You know where the glasses are."
He'd found them while he was rummaging around for bowls. He took down two glasses, and followed her instructions to the corkscrew, retrieved the bottle, poured them both a healthy measure, and then went back to the table, sat down next to Liv, clinked his glass against hers in silent toast. In the living room the TV was playing softly, some cartoon Elliot didn't recognize because all his kids were too old for that shit now, and Noah was still deeply focused on his Legos, not paying any heed to the grownups.
"Cassidy came back at a…weird time for me," Liv started to explain. "I was…angry, after you left. Cragen had saddled me with two rookies to train and I didn't trust them and I resented the hell out of 'em, to be honest. Neither of them was as good as you."
Elliot would have taken that as praise if it didn't hurt so much, thinking about Liv lonely and wounded, feeling like she couldn't trust the people around her, after what he'd done to her. It was always there, the hurt. The hole he'd ripped right through the middle of both of them. The hurt he'd done to himself he could accept, but the hurt he'd done to Liv…he was never gonna make up for that, and her voice was heavy when she spoke, like she knew it, too.
"Cassidy turned up in the middle of an op we were running. And he was fun, you know? He made me laugh, and he remembered me, the old me. I felt like I could be myself with him."
When she couldn't be herself with the rookies, the rookies who were only there because Elliot wasn't. The old me, she'd said, like there was a new one, and Elliot figured that was right, because he'd seen the new one in action. Captain Benson was a formidable creature, and she was different from Olivia. Different, but the same, the way he figured everybody was after ten fucking years.
"And it was good for a while. It was just fun. But then…some things happened. And do not ask me what because I'm not fucking talking about that right now."
"Ok," Elliot said tightly. It was a concession he didn't want to make; he needed to know what some things were, needed it desperately, and his heart was clamoring, begging him to ask, but he held himself back for her sake, heeded her request for leniency in this moment. Whatever it was she wasn't telling him she had her reasons for keeping it secret and if he didn't respect her now she'd never trust him again.
"It pushed us closer. Fast. We moved in together. And then I found out I was pregnant. It scared the shit out of Brian. He didn't want to be a dad."
Back in the day Cassidy hadn't been around for very long, but he'd been a memorable son of a bitch. There were a few moments with Cassidy that Elliot was never going to forget, and one of them was a conversation they'd had about kids. About how hard it was to raise them, how much harder it was for an SVU cop, about how Cassidy wanted them some day. What had happened, Elliot wondered, in the years between that conversation and Liv's pregnancy, that changed Cassidy's mind?
"It made us both start to think about the future and we realized we wanted different things. We broke up before Mia was born."
"Wait," Elliot said, confused. "Before Mia?"
Wasn't Noah older? The math didn't add up; there were holes in Liv's story, and he desperately wanted her to fill them in.
"I told you it was a long story," she said.
"You gonna tell me that story?"
Some things happened. Was Noah one of those things? Was her son what pushed Liv and Cassidy together, made them move in together? But if it was Noah, why would Cassidy balk about being a dad when Mia came around? Wasn't he Noah's dad already?
"Not tonight," Liv said.
Patience had never really been Elliot's strong suit, and he was a born detective, in service to the quietly whispering voice in the back of his mind that always, always wanted answers. He'd always gotten those answers from Liv before; they'd never kept secrets, and he'd known her inside and out. It hurt him, now, to think that there were things she was keeping from him, secrets he wasn't allowed to know. It was gonna drive him crazy, the not knowing. A small, petulant part of him wondered if she was testing him, if she was withholding her secrets from him just to see how he'd react, to see if he'd listen to her, or if he'd push. If it was a test he didn't know what the right answer was.
"All right," he said slowly. "So you're…not together now?"
Liv smiled at him over the rim of her glass; maybe he'd passed the test after all.
"No," she said.
"You're not seeing anybody?"
"Why do you want to know?"
And that, he thought, was the million dollar question.
