She woke to the smell of frying bacon.
The apartment wasn't exactly spacious, the kitchen not that far from her bedroom door, and the scents and sounds of breakfast - eggs, and bacon, and coffee, and utensils clinking softly, the shuffling of pans and plates - filled the whole place, brought a smile to her face as she slipped out of bed and into her bathroom. If she rushed through her morning rituals - brushing her teeth and pulling on her leggings, tying back her hair and washing her face - she didn't give herself a moment's pause to think about why. The reason was simple, but not one she wanted to face; she was a hurry to walk out of her bedroom because she did not want to miss a second of this morning, this strange gift of a moment's quiet domesticity, with him.
It was three weeks, now, since he'd come crashing into her life, and some days she felt as if she could not remember what the world was like without him. It was easy, too easy, the routines they'd made with one another, for one another, having someone to come home to; there was something intoxicating about the simplicity of it. She'd missed having a husband, and Elliot, he wasn't that, not really, hadn't once been inappropriate with her or tried to push their relationship beyond a wary friendship, but it was close. In moments like this one, it felt like having a husband again. Felt like family.
She walked briskly out of her bedroom, and found him right where she thought she would, busy at the stove top in her little kitchen. His back was to her, and for a second she just looked at him, trying to remember how to breathe.
It wasn't fair, she thought, that he should be so handsome, and in love with someone else.
Though he'd been working for Brian for a few weeks now he didn't have much in the way of money to his name, and he was saving what he did make with the goal of rebuilding his life, and he had yet to invest in a new wardrobe. The only clothes he had were the ones Brian had given him when he first arrived, and he was careful with them. That must have been why he'd chosen to cook breakfast shirtless; better to burn himself a little on some wayward splattering grease than risk dirtying one of his precious few shirts. He wore a pair of low-slung black sweatpants and nothing else, and his hips were swaying a little as he sang along to some old Springsteen song on the radio, and Olivia could see him, the breadth of his shoulders, the heavy muscles of his arms and back, the neat tuck of his waist. Could see the strange, ominous looking tattoo in the center of his back, the one she hadn't known he had until the first time she saw him with his shirt off, the one whose meaning she still didn't understand. The other two were easier to figure out; this one was a mystery.
He was a mystery, really. Or had been; she was learning him, now. Learning the lift of his mouth when he thought she'd said something funny, the darkening of his eyes when she said something that made him angry, the flex of his fingers when he encountered something he wanted to touch but knew he shouldn't. Learning the sharpness of his mind and the cleverness of his tongue, his dry sense of humor and his deep-seated sense of justice. Learning, and everything she learned just made her want to draw closer to him.
"There's coffee," he called, not taking his eyes off the bacon for a second. He must have heard the door opening, must have known she was standing there, watching him, and she could've kicked herself for being so foolish, leering at him from across the apartment like he was a piece of meat. Yes, he was sexy, but she knew that already; there wasn't anything special about him, anything new worth taking note of today.
Except that there was, kind of, because for the first time since he'd started living with her she actually had a whole Saturday off, and he didn't have to be at the bar until noon - Brian still had him on the afternoon shift, wasn't ready to move him to nights, and bigger tips, just yet - and he was making breakfast. For him, certainly, but for her, too, she knew. He was making breakfast for them, cooking for her because he always complained that she never fed herself, cooking a meal for them to enjoy together, when most mornings she was in such a rush to get out the door that she couldn't afford such a luxury.
It was nice, having someone to take care of her. She hadn't had a glass of wine in four days. She was perilously close to happy, and that scared her, just a little, because nothing good ever came of her being happy. Happy only led to heartbreak, in her experience.
But there was coffee, and she wanted it, and so she picked her away across the apartment, by the couch where he'd neatly folded the blanket he'd slept under, by his shoes stacked neatly beside it, into her little galley kitchen. Elliot was busy at the stove, and the coffee - and the mugs, and the milk, and the peppermint mocha creamer she liked - were laid out on the counter behind him, along with two empty plates, just waiting for the food to be done.
"Sleep all right?" she asked him as she poured herself a cup of coffee. The kitchen was narrow; they were standing back to back, and very nearly touching as they worked.
"Yeah," he said. It might have been a lie; she couldn't see how he could be comfortable, sleeping on a sofa that wasn't as long as he was tall, but he'd been doing it for weeks now without complaint. "Did you?"
"I did," she told him, but did not tell him what a novelty that was. She hadn't slept all the way through the night since Ed died, plagued by nightmares and a looming anxiety about the futility of her own life, but since Elliot had come to stay she'd been sleeping like the dead. Maybe she'd just been lonesome; maybe she just needed someone there to keep the ghosts at bay.
"So, what do you want to do on your day off?"
This, she thought. There had been a time when she'd spent her weekends out in the world; wandering through the park with Brian, art museums with Ed, bars and showings of the old black and white movies she loved so much. These days, though, she was tired, and the world had grown too heavy. She wanted to spend the day here, in her apartment, safe and without care. She wanted to spend the day with him.
"Do you think -" she started to ask him about his own plans, turning around to face him, leaning back against the counter as she went. But she had no sooner started to speak than Elliot said, "coming through!" and turned himself, and suddenly they were chest to chest, her hands trapped between them, wrapped around her coffee mug, his hands on either side of her, a pan of eggs in one and a pan of bacon in the other.
For the space of a heartbeat they just looked at each other, both of them caught off guard by their sudden, unexpected proximity, by the way the backs of her knuckles brushed against the bare skin of his chest. They were both barefoot, and she had to look up to see his face, spellbound for a moment by the blue of his eyes, by the warmth she found there. Those eyes looked back at her steadily, something like hunger in them, and as she looked a bright red flush washed over his chest.
"Hi," he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling at her as he smiled. He'd begun to grow out a beard, a little salt-and-pepper goatee that made him look dangerous and soft both at the same time.
"Hi," she answered, a little breathlessly.
Slowly he leaned forward, let the heavy weight of his body settle against her, and her heart rocketed up into her throat; she was frozen, looking up at him, his face so close to hers, his lips just there, and what is he doing? Is he gonna -
What he did was gently place the pans down on the counter behind her, saving them both from impending burns. She could hardly breathe, looking at him, wondering what the fuck he was thinking, what the fuck he wanted from her, wondering if it was anything like what she wanted from him. There were a few hours left before he had to go to work, and she was still soft and warm from sleep, and her bedroom door was open, for once, and he was just there, heavy and strong, and he could; if he'd tried to kiss her then, she'd have let him.
Carefully he caught her by the hips, drew her in close to him, and this is it, she thought; it had to be, the moment when the walls between them came crumbling down, when they finally reached for one another, gave in to the maddening pull of longing that had been tugging at them for weeks now.
Or maybe it wasn't, because as he held her his smile deepened, and he used his grip on her hips to tug her away from the counter, to give himself room to step into the space she'd just vacated, and then he released her, and reached instead for a serving spoon so he could start plating up the eggs.
Asshole, she thought. She was hot all over, flushed with desire, her hands shaking in anticipation for a kiss that would not come. And he had to know it, had to know that his every move had lit a fire in her, but he refused to do anything with it, to stoke it higher or douse it completely. Elliot Stabler was, she decided, a bit of a tease.
Then again, maybe he hadn't meant anything by it at all. It was the Liv he left behind who he loved, not the Olivia in front of him. Maybe he was perfectly content to sleep on her couch, and not her bed. Maybe he liked that they were friends, and maybe that was all he ever intended for them to be. Maybe she didn't merit his affection; maybe when he compared her to Liv he found her lacking, and all that love he carried for her would remain, always, reserved for a dead woman he'd never see again.
"Can I ask you something?" she said then. There was a question that had been nagging at her, and she wanted to ask it now, now when she was thinking of the woman he had loved, and wondering whether he would always love her, wondering whether he cared for Olivia at all.
"Anything," he said. The eggs had been portioned out, and he'd turned his attention to the bacon.
"Do you still have that necklace?"
The golden compass he'd carried in his pocket, with its delicate chain, its scattering of little diamonds, the gift intended for a woman who'd died before he could give it to her, seemed to Olivia to be a symbol of his devotion to his Liv. What he chose to do it might give her some clue as to his feelings, his plans for his future.
"Yeah," he said softly.
"You could pawn it, you know," she mused before she could stop herself, and he whirled on her, eyes flashing.
"Excuse me?" he asked in a dark and warning tone.
"You're trying to save up some money," she reminded him. "That necklace, the diamonds, it's gotta be worth something. I was just thinking, since…"
Since you'll never be able to give it to her. Since she's gone. Since I'm still here.
"No," he said shortly.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
"It's all I have left, Olivia," he said. Her apology softened him somewhat; he'd been spoiling for a fight but couldn't bring himself to berate her after she said sorry. "That necklace is the only thing I have left to remind me that the world I left behind is real. It's the only…it's the only piece of her I have."
He'd never given it to her; his Liv had never worn that pretty pendant around her pretty neck. But Olivia understood; the necklace was more than a necklace. It was the reminder of how he'd loved her, the dreams he'd dreamed for her, for them together, dreams that had been shattered but that he still couldn't bring himself to let go of. It was like the plain gold wedding band Olivia still wore on a chain beneath her own shirt. A tombstone she could carry with her everywhere she went. Maybe she'd take her ring off one day. Maybe the day he sold the necklace.
"I'm sorry," she said again. "I know you miss her."
But did he? Did he miss his Liv? How could he, when Olivia was right in front of him, when he still saw the face he loved every single day?
Because it's not her face he loved, a dark voice whispered in the back of her mind. He loved her. He loved a better version of you, and you'll never be as good as her.
"Come on," he said, not responding to her, not really. "Let's eat before it gets cold."
She didn't want to fight so she took the plate he offered her, and went with him to the sofa, where they sat down together and ate their eggs and bacon in a roiling, uncomfortable silence.