Prompt #56: City-wide blackout

Darkness and Light

~oOo~

Olivia's arms are laden with containers full of leftovers as she wiggles her feet into her boots. Noah and Eli are by her side, sharing what she hopes is a good-natured argument about one video game or another, and Elliot is standing in front of her, an expectant look on his face.

"Elliot, I'm a grown woman," she says, as he takes a paper shopping bag from her right hand so she can pull her hat onto her head. "I have driven in more snow storms than I can count, and there's barely even an inch on the ground."

"It's at least three."

She rolls her eyes and takes the bag back. "Still. I have a big car and I know what I'm doing. I don't need you to drive us home."

Honestly though, she is sleepy and stuffed from dinner, leaving her stuck somewhere between a desire to pass out right there in Elliot's entryway and wanting desperately to get back home and into her own bed.

Elliot's invitation to Christmas Eve had come as a surprise, though Olivia guessed it shouldn't have. The Stablers were having a traditional Italian seven-fish dinner, something they'd acquired from their community in Queens and hadn't done in years, but Bernie insisted they resurrect before she "dies and no one remembers the family traditions."

It wasn't the first such invitation she'd received from her former partner, but what they are doing now, whatever their relationship has become, is still new. He'd turned up at her apartment door a week after Thanksgiving, saying he was done with undercover assignments, and she'd pulled him into her arms. She may not have been ready before, but after the long months apart, they were both beyond ready.

They'd kissed without preamble and hadn't stopped since.

"I know you can get home on your own," Elliot says now, his big blue eyes locking onto hers. "But I'm trying to be a gentleman here."

Olivia smirks at that. "And how will you get home?"

"Subway," he says with a shrug, even though they both know the nearest station is a mile away. And they will likely shut down anyway. "Or I can stay."

He watches her with the cocky look he likes to wear. It's the one that always manages to make her body tingle even when she simultaneously wants to slap him.

She and Elliot haven't yet labeled what they are. They are people who kiss and hold hands. They are also people who sneak to his apartment after work and keep their voices hushed in her bed so Noah doesn't hear. But he's never stayed the night. Noah loves having him around, but Liv is still nervous. Being with Elliot is everything she'd ever wanted, but she doesn't want to ruin it. And she always worries about getting Noah's hopes up when life can be so fragile.

Plus, today isn't just any random night in December.

"It's Christmas Eve, Elliot," she says, shifting her weight and the food in her arms. "Half your family is spending the night here, and assuming the snow stops, Maureen and the kids will be back in the morning."

"And I'll be here," he says, his smirk turning to a full smile.

She doesn't need a man to drive her through the snow. She is completely capable, but she lets out a sigh and shrugs her shoulders. Elliot's smile grows as he grabs his coat.

"Guys, I'm taking the Bensons home," he calls over his shoulder to the members of his family who look not the slightest bit surprised. "I'll be back. Don't wait up."

Bernie stands from the stool at the kitchen counter and comes up next to her. She clasps her fingers around Olivia's arm with a much firmer grip than someone her age should have been capable of.

"Just make sure my boy is back before his grandchildren arrive."

There's a twinkle in her eye as she says it and Olivia wants to insist he's not staying the night, but she doesn't want to disappoint Bernie's romantic heart.

"I will," she tells her, gives her a hug, and follows Elliot out the door.

~oOo~

They've barely made it back into Manhattan when everything suddenly goes dark. Streetlights, buildings…traffic lights. Everything.

"Mom…"

"It's okay, Noah," Olivia says, turning to look over her shoulder at her worried son. "Just a blackout."

Elliot is craning his neck, looking through the windshield up at the dark buildings around them. "Give it a minute. Probably won't last long."

But he's wrong. The snow is still coming and the lights are still out when they make it back to their building. It takes a little work to turn the SUV off the slick street and into the dark parking garage, but Elliot manages. He finds a spot in the darkness as Olivia hangs up her phone.

"Everything's fine," she says, relieved she doesn't have to go to the station. "Bruno said the generator's on and the phones have been relatively quiet."

As they remove the leftovers from the trunk, Olivia is feeling relieved that maybe this year, blackout aside, she could have a relatively normal Christmas.

Until she remembers what floor they live on and mutters a curse under her breath.

Elliot turns to face her. "What?"

"No power, no elevator," she says simply. "You guys ready to walk off those seven fish?"

Noah lets out a long and dramatic groan that only a teenager could pull off. Olivia looks to Elliot and can just make out his smile in the darkness. The son of a bitch is enjoying himself.

"Glad I came along, aren't ya?" he asks and she just shakes her head.

~oOo~

Noah only makes it three floors before he starts complaining. Elliot had insisted on carrying all the leftovers, so she and her son are responsible for nothing heavier than their cell phones. Still, Noah drags his body, step after step, as if carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"You gonna let an old man beat you to your apartment?" Elliot goads her son as they approach the eighth floor. Olivia aims her phone flashlight at him, noting how much he's sweating, despite his bravado.

"Thought you were a dancer," he continues. "That's like an athlete, right?"

"We don't climb stairs at dance class," Noah snaps and Olivia says his name in warning.

"Liv, it's okay. It's one hell of a way to spend Christmas Eve."

They keep climbing and Olivia removes her jacket and then her sweater so she's down to a tank top and she can finally breathe.

"Four more floors," she says as they reach another landing and turn to the next flight. She's winded and annoyed with herself for being winded. She tries to get to the gym, but so much of her time these days is spent in early morning meetings and filling out paperwork late into the evening. She hates the thought of using what little free time she has running on a treadmill instead of spending it with her son. Or Elliot.

"You think Santa will wait for us to get there before he comes?" Elliot asks, insistent on filling the silence, or maybe just needling her frustrated child.

"I don't believe in Santa," Noah mumbles in a quiet voice.

"I hope he didn't hear that," Elliot says, undeterred. "He may bring that Starfield game right back to the North Pole."

Olivia can't see it, but she is pretty sure Noah is rolling his eyes. This is the first she's heard Noah explicitly say he doesn't believe in Santa, and while she knew it to be true, her chest hurts at the finality of it. He's not a baby anymore and all at once she sees him in her mind going to high school, to college. Meeting someone, starting a family.

Elliot reaches out for her, his heavy hand finding her shoulder and giving it a squeeze. She tips her flashlight towards his face, making him squint, but he nods his head. He knows. He's watched five children grow up.

"There we are," she says, her voice surprisingly tight with emotion. "Made it."

Noah pushes past her, slamming his hands into the door. She knows he's just cranky, frustrated and tired, but as she watches him storm down the hall to their apartment, she hangs her head and takes a deep breath.

"Liv, he's a good kid," Elliot says, leaning his body into the door so she can pass through. "If being pissed about climbing stairs on Christmas Eve is the worst you get, count yourself lucky."

She offers him a smile that she hopes he can see and follows after her son.

Noah leans against the wall with his arms crossed while he waits for her to unlock the door. Once inside he makes for his room, but Olivia calls after him.

"Shower!"

He turns to look at her but doesn't say anything and storms off to the bathroom.

Olivia sighs. "Not how I imagined tonight going."

She walks to the kitchen and digs around in the cabinet under the sink, pulling out all the candles she has. The apartment will smell like a cacophony of peonies, vanilla, cinnamon, and lavender, but at least they'll be able to see.

She lights the wicks and carries one of the jars to the bathroom, knocking softly on the door. She hears the shower running, so she calls out. "Noah, I have a candle. Can I come in?"

He tells her yes, so she cracks the door open and leaves the candle on the counter next to his cell phone, its light shining up at the ceiling.

"Do you want me to turn your flashlight off? Save the battery?"

Noah gives her a grunt of a yes, so she turns off the light.

"It's just a blackout," she says, her patience for his sulking wearing thin. "Finish up and go to bed. Tomorrow's Christmas and I'm sure the lights will be back on before then."

There's a moment of silence while she waits for some sort of response. Noah sighs and pokes his face out from the side of the shower curtain, only partially visible in the light from the candle.

"I'm sorry."

Olivia offers him a small smile. "It's okay."

She leaves the room and walks back to the kitchen, finding Elliot standing by the window looking out at the city.

"How's the snow?" she asks

"Hard to tell, but it may have gotten worse."

She walks to the window and threads her fingers through his. The only light is from the moon, illuminating the snow falling from the sky.

"You can't go home in this."

He turns to look at her and shrugs.

"You knew that was going to happen," she says, but she's not upset.

"I know we don't…" He squeezes her fingers in his own and uses his other hand to rub his chin. "I know we're taking things slow here, but I… I wouldn't mind being with you and Noah for Christmas morning."

"What about your kids?" she asks in a small voice.

"They'll be alright until I get back."

"If you…" Olivia pauses, realizing maybe she'd misjudged how he wanted to spend the holiday. "Why didn't you just ask? If you wanted to be here…"

Elliot shrugs. "I didn't want to scare you."

Olivia smiles, watching the light from the candles he'd spread around the apartment flicker across his face. She had been scared–for three years having him back in the city she'd been scared–but things are different now. She trusts him again, believes him when he says he'll stay, that he'll never hurt her again.

If she'd been brave enough, she would have asked him to be there. She would have asked him to spend the night, every night since he got back home. But old habits die hard. After decades of protecting her heart, it had become second nature. Elliot was breaking down her walls, showing her that she deserved happiness, she and Noah.

"What about Noah?" she asks as she thinks of him, because it would be a pretty big change from their normal Christmas routine.

Elliot pulls her into his side and places a kiss on the crown of her head. "We'll ask him. You ask him, and if he says no, I'll ski home."

Olivia laughs. "He won't say no if I ask."

Noah, as cranky as he can be at times, is too polite for that. And he always wants Elliot around.

They stand in silence, arms around each other as they watch the snow fall. Olivia hears the bathroom door open, but she doesn't move. She snuggles in closer to Elliot as she considers the last time she'd felt this comfortable with a man in her home with her child nearby. Noah was too young to have any lasting memories of Ed, but they'd felt like a family for a while.

It had been a long time since they'd had that, but maybe this year…

"Hey, Elliot," Noah's voice comes from the hall. "I hope you aren't going to drive home in this."

~oOo~

Noah had convinced her to let him stay up just long enough to have hot chocolate. She made him put out milk and cookies, regardless of what he'd said to Elliot about Santa, and Noah was sweet enough to play along. Elliot watched them and she could see him remembering doing the same thing with his own children.

Now, as she leaves Noah's room, walking back through the darkness to Elliot who's sitting by her unlit tree, she sees how full of emotion he truly is.

"You okay?" she asks as she approaches.

Elliot clears his throat and runs his hand across his nose. "Yeah. It's… just a lot of memories."

Olivia knows he's thinking about Kathy, so she wraps her arm around him, snuggling in until he returns the gesture. Their happiness didn't negate what he'd had with his wife. Kathy would always be a part of their life. All Olivia could do was support Elliot in moments of grief.

"I wasn't always there when…when Santa would come," he says, his eyes still on the tree even though it was too dark to see much. "Kathy had everything figured out–which wrapping paper for which gifts, where they went under the tree… Even if I was home, I was only allowed to carry boxes to the living room. She did everything else."

Olivia had always been in awe of how Kathy had kept it all together. It must have been difficult, starting a family so young, but she was able to manage four, and then five kids, with a cop for a husband. A cop who spent more time with his partner than he did at home.

"Do you want to help me play Santa?" she asks, taking his hand in hers. "It's not much and my wrapping paper has no system…but…"

It had been a long time since she'd had anyone to help her set the gifts under the tree. Her breath hitches in her throat as she feels tears prick her eyes. Elliot knows. He knows about Ed now, he knows about what she'd been through since he'd left.

He knows about the Christmas Noah had spent with Amanda's family… when she hadn't gone to Elliot's family Christmas because of hate crimes and violence that ended in her killing a man.

He knows how much this means, to both of them, spending Christmas together, but he doesn't have to say anything. He just hugs her tighter until she pulls away and leads him to her bedroom. He follows her, with her flashlight out, to her bedroom and to her closet. She pushes aside a series of coats, removes a red and green wrapped box and hands it to him. He holds the gift as she walks to her bathroom, opening the closet to grab a small gift from behind the water pick that she never uses.

Elliot reaches out a hand and stacks the box on the first one. Olivia smiles and falls to her knees by the side of her bed. She bends forward, reaching an arm underneath as far as she can and pulls out a bin of sweaters. Opening the lid, she lifts the black cashmere that she reserves for special occasions, revealing a new video game wrapped in reindeer paper. She hands it to Elliot.

"Benson, is this Christmas or an Easter egg hunt?"

She smirks at him as she tucks the bin back under the bed and stands, knees and back protesting at the movement. "Noah's the kid of a cop. He figures out everything."

"How do you remember where you hid them all?"

She points a thumb to her chest and smiles. "Cop."

Elliot laughs and she continues her quest to acquire the rest of the hidden packages. Behind shoeboxes in the hall closet, inside the slow cooker she never uses in the back of a kitchen cabinet. The stack in Elliot's arms grows until she opens the hutch in the living room and removes the last present.

This one is for him. It's a little bigger than a VHS tape and wrapped in the red paper she'd grabbed at the Walgreens by the station. It's not much, because she couldn't decide what to give to her partner of 12 years who'd left for a decade and came back to become her…well…

There was nothing that seemed right for the most important man who had ever been a part of her life. In the end, she'd found a simple black picture frame at a small shop near her hairstylist. She'd taken it home and dug through her closet to find the box she'd hidden for over a decade. Among the notes, and other odds and ends that reminded her of him, she removed a small stack of pictures, flipping through until she found the one she wanted. Elliot was sitting at his desk while she perched on its edge. They were young and new to their partnership, laughing at something she couldn't remember. Brian had taken the picture, for whatever reason, and she'd held onto it all this time.

It looked perfect in the frame.

She doesn't add the gift to the pile, but instead walks to the tree and places it underneath herself. Elliot follows and they work together to arrange the gifts in the darkness. When the last present is set in place, Olivia steps back and looks at the tree. And she laughs. It's so dark and so quiet, and so un-Christmasy it's almost ridiculous.

Elliot squeezes her hand. "Wine?"

"Definitely."

Olivia sits on the couch and after a few minutes, Elliot joins her, handing her a glass of wine.

"Merry Christmas."

"Not quite," she says, looking at her watch and noting that they have about 15 minutes until the day officially changes. "Thanks for driving us home."

"Not mad at me for encroaching on your independence?"

She raises an eyebrow at that and he chuckles. It never feels like encroaching when Elliot is near her. He'd taken up so much space in her life, but other than when his temper flared and he acted like an ass, she never minded having him by her side.

And this…spending the holiday with him, mingling families and setting out presents…it is something she never thought she'd have.

Her vision blurs as her eyes once again fill with tears. "Christmas is a lot, isn't it?"

Elliot nods and places a hand on her thigh, humming in agreement.

"I didn't have great Christmases as a kid," she tells him, thinking of Serena's inconsistent parenting. "I would always get my hopes up and think that this year would be like the ones I'd seen on TV, but something would happen–Serena would be drunk, or hungover, or she'd burn dinner and get angry."

"I had some good ones," Elliot says, "and a lot of bad ones. My mom missed a few. I missed a few with my own kids."

"You always made an effort to be there with them," she says, remembering her days of volunteering to work at the station so he could be with his family.

"Thanks to you."

She squeezes his hand where it lays on her leg and takes a sip of her wine. She doesn't want to bring them somewhere sad, but she also doesn't want to carry everything from her past alone anymore.

"There was one Christmas…with Tucker," she starts, turning towards Elliot to gauge his reaction, but he doesn't look bothered so she presses on. "I let myself believe that maybe I could have a family. We made a turkey, watched Noah open gifts. It was nice. It felt good, but we didn't even make it a month after that."

"Liv, I'm sorry," Elliot says, but she isn't. It had been a really good Christmas, and she didn't regret spending it that way.

"It all led us here, right?" She thinks about Kathy, her near forty-year marriage to Elliot. It's all a part of their story. Without everything that had happened in their past, they may not have found each other now.

Elliot pulls her in close and she turns her face up to meet his eyes. He smooths a piece of hair behind her ear and she feels at least ten years younger than she actually is. He leans forward, his lips lightly brushing hers before the full pressure of his kiss consumes her. She wonders if the lightning that flies through her will fade the longer they are together, because after a month of knowing what his lips and hands feel like on her body, it's still just as bright and electric as the first time.

Just as his lips start to part, there is a loud click and the hum of electricity fills the room. Olivia pulls back to find the Christmas tree shining brightly beside them.

"Forgot I left that on," she says, placing her wine glass on the coffee table.

Elliot smiles, big and goofy. "Glad you did."

Olivia looks at her watch and smiles. "Merry Christmas, Elliot."

He leans forward, placing his now empty glass on the table next to hers, before his hands lift to cup her face. He tips her toward him, soft and strong before the whisper of his voice tickles her lips. "Merry Christmas, Olivia."

She can barely kiss him around her smile.

In the morning, she'll make pancakes. They'll drink coffee on the couch while Noah opens his gifts. Elliot will check the roads, and they'll bundle up and head back to Long Island City so he can see his children, grandchildren, and mother. It will be loud and crowded, full of laughter and love, and it will be the most normal Christmas of Olivia's life.

But before all that, she wants to enjoy this, enjoy him, safe here with her in her apartment on Christmas Eve. He kisses her like he's loved her for decades, and she thinks maybe he has. She wraps her arms around him, pulling him into a tight hug and places a kiss on his neck. He's here and he's hers, and he isn't going to leave.

She sits back so she can see his eyes, the eyes she's loved for longer than she would ever admit and she lets out a content sigh.

"Let's go to bed."

The author of this SVU - Heart for the Holidays story will be revealed in January