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Elliot took a swig of his lukewarm beer and glanced around the table. Ayanna and Reyes had their heads bent together, talking in hushed tones. Whelan was trying his damndest to keep his eyes off Jet, and failing spectacularly. And Jet was transfixed by something over Elliot’s shoulder.
Whelan had chosen the bar tonight. Some hole in the wall in a side alley, with cheap beer and a small dance floor and jukebox in the corner. A lazy beat strummed from the speakers in what Kathleen would call laid back folk revival. Not his style, but not terrible. He took another slug of beer and shifted, trying to get comfortable on the wobbly wooden stool.
He was tired. Bone deep, to the depths of his soul, exhausted. He’d collared a cop killer, but he knew it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to his fellow officers. He was a rat- through and through- and once that label had been branded into you, no amount of penance could fade the scar. He’d done the right thing, and he didn’t owe a single one of those sons of bitches an explanation, but still-
Taking a deep breath, he focused on relaxing his shoulders, and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. He should have picked up when Liv had called earlier. No doubt she’d heard. She’d probably heard a lot of things over the past few weeks since they’d worked their last joint case. But he couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone. Not since he’d felt his gut twist into knots so intricate, they’d never let him loose. Since he’d felt the overwhelming vibration in every muscle of his body, to run and never stop.
Leaning over his dead UC with Liv in his peripheral was a nightmare come to life. A nightmare they’d lived once before. A nightmare he’d relived over and over in a decade without her. His fight or flight had kicked in, and charging in on its heels was the shame. Come to drown him. Because once again, he’d wanted to flee. Ditch the phone, ditch the job, ditch New York. Ditch her. And never look back. But he’d tried that before, hadn’t he, and it hadn’t worked then either.
He’d stood outside her apartment door for hours the night he’d shot Jenna. Holding on, with his bloody fingertips, to the small, tattered scrap of morality he had left. He didn’t want to talk about his feelings, he didn’t want to rehash the days events, or the last thirteen years. Because the truth was, he’d shot a sixteen year old girl before she could shoot Olivia, and he didn’t know how to reconcile that. He just wanted to kick her door down, bury himself deep inside of her, and stay there for the rest of their lives. And his Liv, she would have let him.
So he’d ran instead.
And years later every emotion he’d buried down deep in his chest, pushing and pushing until they were so small he could pretend they never even existed, came roiling to the surface in a riptide he knew would never release him once he dipped a toe in.
Emotions he still didn’t want to confront, emotions he couldn’t bring to Liv until he did.
But in a parallel universe, a universe where they could just be El and Liv, he could be sitting beside her in this dingy bar, heads tucked together like Reyes and Ayanna. Soft words and softer smiles, and a soft place for them both to land when the shit of the day got too heavy.
He was dragged from his thoughts with two small fingers nudging his bicep. When he turned his attention to Jet, she was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes still glued over his shoulder. He was about to turn to see what was so interesting, when those two fingers jabbed harder into his skin. Shooting her gaze to his, she tilted her head towards the dance floor, and quietly questioned, “Is that Captain Benson?”
Heart stalling in his chest, his entire body stiffened for a millisecond, before his head whipped around so fast he felt the heated pop radiate down his neck.
And there she was. A memory he’d never had but recalled all the same.
She was turned away from him but he could see a fall of dark waves and a pretty floral dress, tight across her back, leading to a loosely swinging skirt against a hypnotic sway of hips.
He’d know her anywhere.
And then she turned her head and he caught her profile. The curve of her cheek, a pouty bottom lip, the jut of her chin, the sweep of her lashes, a hank of soft hair swept across the side of her face hidden from him.
He drew in a breath so deep, he was afraid his lungs would break through their cage.
Within a blink she was facing him fully. The dress had a row of buttons from hem to chest. And what seemed a bit of a demure choice from the back, was one button shy of public indecency from the front. His gaze raced along her frame, savoring the woman he’d seemed to conjure through force of will alone. A slope of a perfect breast, a golden pendant hanging from a golden chain, the hollow above one delicate collarbone, and back to those hips that had never stopped circling, rolling, giving him everything he could never bring himself to ask for.
Ayanna brought him back to himself with a murmur of his name, “Stabler?”
“Yup.” He rasped. Belatedly answering Jet’s question while keeping his eyes locked to those hips. And the hands gripping them.
He didn’t turn to look, but he could feel Ayanna leaning closer to him as she asked, “Who’s that guy?”
With a monumental effort, Elliot’s gaze slipped
away from Liv’s hips to the face that was dipped close to hers, whispering something into her ear that had a smile tugging at her lips.
Trevor fucking Langan.
“A defense attorney.” He growled.
“He’s tall.” Ayanna noted.
“And cute.” Jet added.
“Good for her.” Ayanna murmured, and Elliot could hear the smile dancing along her words.
“I’m sorry, but who’s Captain Benson?” Whelan asked.
“Stabler’s old partner.” Ayanna answered, and that time, Elliot had to clench his teeth at the smirk he knew she wore.
“Oh.” Whelan murmured.
Ten seconds later, Elliot knew a lightbulb had finally fought for a flicker when Whelan exclaimed, “Ohhhhhhh. Damn! Really?”
During their discussion, the song had ended, and he watched as Olivia patted Langan on the chest with a smile, and headed towards the back of the bar where the restroom was.
Fear, confusion, shame, longing, and a desperate debilitating love- all the emotions he’d been so terrified to bring to the surface- were all expelled from him with the force of an atomic bomb, as white hot rage took their place, flowing through every bone and blood vessel in his body.
“Excuse me.” He threw over his shoulder to his team, already halfway out of his seat to give chase to the woman he should have been chasing all along.
Hurrying down the hall, he caught the edge of the door to the single room bathroom before she could latch it, causing that glorious hair to whip around and a single dark brow to lift in surprise.
“Wha- Elliot?” Her brow furrowed and she froze, giving him enough time to put a hand to her hip- in the same spot Langan’s hand had been seconds earlier- and push her the rest of the way into the bathroom, slamming the door behind them and twisting the lock in place.
He crowded her into a corner, dipping his chin until they were nose to nose and bit out, “Langan? Really?”
A puff of air left her lips and ghosted across his, but she remained silent. Those dark eyes tracing across his face, but refusing to meet his own.
The rage he had no right to feel, but was running rampant regardless, tightened his throat until his voice was a gritty, graveled thing when he finally managed to rasp, “Are you fucking him?”
Her head jerked back and that little groove appeared between her eyebrows again. And with a willpower honed from a quarter century of wanting, Elliot fought back the urge to smooth his thumb along that furrow.
“What?” She asked on a surprised exhale.
“You heard me.”
Gripping his biceps, she began to push him away, murmuring calmly, “Look, you have a lot on your plate, so I’m gonna let this slide and-“
“No.”
Her eyes locked on his, and he watched as the calm was swept away by the sheer force of them. Elliot and Olivia. Olivia and Elliot. They were many, many things over the years, but calm had rarely ranked. Their very beings were just too much for that. Too loud, too livid, too passionate, too pleading. And she may have perfected her calm Captain routine in the years without him, but he was Elliot and she was Olivia. They fought, they raged, they pushed away and they pulled close, gripped each other tight until every knuckle whitened with the weight of them.
“Excuse me?” And there was the Captain voice. Not the calm, the command.
Grasping her wrists, he used them to guide her back against the wall, lifting them and pinning them above her head.
“Are you fucking him? Yes or no?”
His blood sang in his veins as he watched that glowing ember in her eyes kindle into a wildfire only he knew how to stoke.
“That’s none of your business.” She growled, the pretense of professionalism she seemed so desperate to cling to, melting away the closer they stepped to the blaze.
After years of studying her across their desks, across a console, across a crappy diner tabletop, he would normally come to the conclusion that this particular dip of her chin- purse of her lips- meant she wanted to be anywhere besides where she currently was.
But she hadn’t once pushed against the hands caging her wrists. In fact, she’d curled her fingers so they were clutching the backs of his hands.
He leaned in until they were sharing a single breath, from the depths of her chest to his and back again.
“Everything about you is my business.”
A quick jerk of her head backwards and a roll of her eyes, had a current crackling across his skin, from aching chest to aching cock. His Liv was about to break the surface of the tide that had cocooned her since the night they’d come back to each other. She’d come close a few times before- short bursts of air and accusations- but then she’d slide right back under, to the safety of the deep. Where he could shout all he wanted, but she’d never hear.
“Since when?”
Realizing the rage had disappeared, but in its place was a yearning so strong it was a wonder he was still standing, he murmured softly, “Little over two decades ago. Remember?”
“Give or take a decade. Right, detective?” She shot back, giving her head an indignant shake, and a wave of vanilla and lavender weaved it’s way across the space between them, wrapping around his throat and squeezing.
It wasn’t his Olivia.
She was spice and a tang of salty sweat. Leather and laundry detergent. And something wholly her that he’d never forgotten, even when he’d desperately wanted to.
And just like that, the rage bubbled back into a rolling boil.
He stepped closer until their hips were flush, bending his knees to notch his straining cock against the heat of her. They simultaneously groaned at the feeling, his hands tightening over her wrists, her fingernails digging deeper into his skin.
It was a labored pant when he asked again, “Are you fucking him?”
She gave an experimental roll of her hips and he watched, mesmerized, as she tipped her head back on a slow blink, biting her lip and doing it again.
“Olivia?”
She sighed, a sweet, soft whisper of air that had his balls drawing up tight.
Tracking a bead of sweat from the hollow at the base of her throat, across a golden acre of skin, and down the curve of a spectacular breast before it disappeared into an ether of black lace, had him releasing her wrists to wrap an arm around her waist, the opposite hand gripping the nape of her neck and squeezing.
Dipping her chin so she could meet his eyes, she sighed again, a deep, ragged thing this time. Like coming so close to fulfilling the promise of them had exhausted her.
“I’ve lived a lot of life in the between, Elliot. And Langan’s a part of that.”
“Olivia.” He ground out. Frustration rising, temper flaring, patience run to ground.
She tilted her head to the side and narrowed those dark eyes. “You don’t see me barricading you in a bathroom to interrogate you about your sex life.”
He pulled her closer with the arm around her waist. “Because I don’t have one.”
“Right.” She laughed, a wretched accusation that vibrated down his spine. “You forget I helped you investigate your mistress?”
His fingers clenched around her nape. “Why won’t you answer the question?”
He watched as the switch finally flipped, and she bucked her body to try and free herself from his hold, snarling like the hellcat he knew she was. “Bite me. That’s why, you son of a bitch.”
“There’s my girl.”
“I was never your girl.”
“Oh yes you were.”
Within the span of her single disgruntled breath, he’d flexed his arms, lifting her up to him, and covering her mouth with his own. Tasting her top lip, tugging at her bottom, and teasing his tongue along the seam.
“Open for me.” He gently coaxed.
She slung a long leg over his hip and Elliot had to swallow hard to beat back the laugh that wanted to rise. “Your mouth, Liv.”
She wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck and nipped his lip, growling in her deep tenor, made deeper by the lust soaking every syllable, “Go to hell.”
He used his arm around her waist to shift her until his thigh was pressed between her legs, right where she needed it. Clenching his fingers in her hair, he guided her back to his mouth, and smiled against her snarl. “Ride that.”
And as with all things with them, always so in sync, one swivel of her hips and they were tongues and teeth and a blinding need that encompassed every molecule of air around them.
She filled his every sense. He tasted the wine on her tongue. He inhaled the vanilla and lavender that floated along her skin, and under it all, his Olivia. His fingers dug into the silk of her hair, and the tiny moans in the back of her throat were second only to the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. If he could pull himself away from her, something he had absolutely no intention of doing, he’d see flushed cheeks, bright eyes, swollen lips- a woman on her way to being well satisfied, well fucked. A woman well loved.
Because, dear God he did. He loved her. Had loved her for longer than he could remember. Had carried that love across an ocean like an albatross slung around his shoulders, not letting him forget for a second that he’d left his heart, bruised and fighting to beat, in a precinct in Manhattan.
A frustrated grunt rose in her throat and he swallowed it down. Her fingertips were kneading his shoulders while her legs twitched restlessly, and Elliot almost smiled. His stubborn girl. She needed his help but Olivia Benson would be damned if she would ever ask for it. Gripping her hips with both hands, he pulled her tighter against him, dragging her back and forth along his thigh and giving her clit the friction that she needed.
After a moment of working together to give her everything they’d both ever wanted, she moved her hands to cradle his jaw and gently broke the kiss.
She studied him, silent and watchful but not wary, and he let her. Her eyes were tracing him again, from temple to throat and back again. He imagined she was cataloguing every change that ten years apart had wrought.
Gliding her fingers along his stubble from cheek to chin, she began to speak, so softly Elliot had to strain to hear the hushed words.
“I’ve missed you, El.”
And his heart clenched. Because that El sounded like it was mined from the deepest caverns of her chest, like she’d hacked away at every stone that held it in place, until there was nothing left but a secret between them that the light of day had never seen.
“Those first couple of years,” she continued, and he watched her eyes, tears trembling along her lower lids but refusing to fall. “I was drowning without you. Every time I got a foothold, someone would bring you up and drag me back under.” Her gaze dropped to his chest as she watched her finger toy with a button of his shirt. “I- the grief-“ a sigh escaped her, so heavy, Elliot felt the colossal weight of it pressing against his bones until he thought they would shatter, “it was…grinding me into the ground.” His hands tightened on her hips as he gently touched his forehead to hers, and Liv lifted her eyes to his before she finished softly, “I know it’s not perfect, not yet, maybe not ever, but I’m glad you’re here. With me. And I hope you stay. Here. With me.”
They watched each other for what felt like hours. No one in this bar, no one in New York, no one in the whole world but them- El and Liv- in a sheltered space they’d painstakingly carved out for each other two decades ago.
He didn’t utter a word. He couldn’t. His throat was so tight, he wasn’t even sure a breath could squeeze through. He did the only thing he could do, he trailed his fingers along the hem of her dress until he reached her buttons and began to undo them. Because he was going to make love to this woman. This heartbreakingly beautiful, magnificent, undaunted woman, whose memory had battered against his heart relentlessly every second, minute, hour since the day he’d walked away from her.
They were in a bathroom in a bar, on an alley he couldn’t even remember the name to, and his sternum was cracking open with every button he loosened.
He was a fucking idiot.
There was nothing to be scared of. Not with Liv. The push and pull was them. The backwards and forwards and two steps to the side and the leaps away from each other just to circle back again. Back to where they’d always belonged. Because she’d carried him with her too. Every second, every minute, every hour since the day he’d walked away from her.
Her voice came to him in a whisper, colored with a gentle love and an aching want, “Elliot, what are you-“
He’d unbuttoned her to her hips and with one sharp tug, her pretty lace panties were shredded in his hand.
“El,” she breathed on a sweet sigh that had warmth radiating from the center of his chest to the tips of his fingers.
He tucked the scrap of lace into his pocket and locked eyes with her, gaze never wavering as he gripped her thighs and wrapped them around his waist. “I missed you too, Olivia. And I’m about to show you how much.”
He waited silently, watching her, giving her time to decide. Because he needed her to want this as much as he did, to want him, to want them.
Her nose wrinkled in that adorable scrunch, and he let go of a breath brimming with relief. He knew what that meant and his heart rate kicked up a notch in anticipation.
Olivia’s hands dropped to his jeans, one palming his cock through the material and the other undoing his button and sliding down his zipper. When he was finally free, she wrapped a palm around him and gave him a slow pump that had his eyes rolling into the back of his head. Then she guided him to her. Dragging the tip along her wet folds for an indescribable second that had Elliot grinding his teeth to hold himself back, before she notched him to her entrance and waited.
Closing his eyes for a moment, he let the memory of every day spent without her melt away. Until the only thought left, the only word on his tongue, the only prayer he could recite, was Olivia. Quivering lips and harsh panting breaths and the smell of her arousal inhaled deeply, filling his nostrils and coating the back of his throat. Taking a beat, and one more lungful of her, he opened his eyes and questioned softly, “Liv?”
“Please.”
He bottomed out in one deep stroke and stilled, letting her adjust and praying to every saint he could remember that he wouldn’t embarrass himself.
Because Olivia, Jesus Christ, Olivia. Every dirty, depraved, dangerous fantasy he’d ever lost the debate about taking to confessional, didn’t hold a candle to what it felt like to be inside her. Connected to her. Engulfed in her heat, buried to the hilt.
He kissed her temple, her eyelids, the apple of each cheek and the smooth curve of her jaw before he buried his face against her hair and asked quietly, “You okay, baby?”
She answered by bracing her forearms on his shoulders, lifting herself up and sinking back down slowly, a smooth glide that nearly had him coming on the spot.
He laughed, a rusty sound pulled from a man who’d never embraced her particular brand of joy. She was good, she was fine. She wanted him and she wanted this. And goddammit, deep down to his bone marrow he knew, that he was put on this earth to give her what she wanted.
He brushed another light kiss to her temple and whispered, “Hold on, baby, yeah?”
Against his cheek, he felt her cheek lift in a smile. “Yeah, El.”
He braced a forearm underneath her ass, gripped her throat gently with his other hand, and lifted his head to watch a million and one emotions flicker across Olivia Benson’s eyes as he fucked her for the first, of what they both knew, would be many times.
It wasn’t long before he felt her slick heat constricting around him.
“El-“ she gasped on a labored breath, close and needing him to bring her home.
“Wait for me, Liv.”
“El, I-“
“Wait, baby.”
“Elliot.” She snapped, frustration and want and something oh so Olivia winding around his name.
He flexed the hand around her throat and brought her closer, grounding out against her lips, “Come for me. Now.”
And her body obeyed his command. The rhythmic contracting of those delicate muscles had dark spots dancing in his vision. Squeezing him so tight, the only thing he could do was stay buried inside her and let her milk him dry.
The aftershocks were still rolling through both of them as he nipped her earlobe, ghosting kisses along her neck until he got to the notch at the base of her throat, dipping his tongue inside to lick the salt from her skin.
And a snapshot of a memory flashed against his closed eyelids.
A short bob and boxy pantsuit. She was hopped up on adrenaline and dripping sweat from some perp pursuit across Central Park. That was the first time he can remember wondering what her body would taste like, fresh from the thrill of the chase, fresh from a solid fucking in the janitor’s closet at the precinct.
Twenty five years and now he knew.
He could wish they’d had a different path, but then, would he know what it was like to have her head tucked to his throat, soft pants of breath warming his skin? Would he know what it was like to be chest to chest with her, hearts beating in a push and pull that mirrored their life together? Would he know what it felt like to have her delicate fingers smoothing a soothing circle into the skin beneath his ear?
It certainly wasn’t the easiest path, but they weren’t easy people.
It was them. Elliot and Olivia. Olivia and Elliot. Exactly how it was meant to be.
She wiggled her hips and he slid out of her, releasing her thighs and easing her down until her feet hit the floor.
Dropping to his knees, he began buttoning her dress as Liv smoothed her hands through her tousled hair and noted softly, “I’m not sleeping with him.”
Elliot tipped his head back to meet her eyes and grinned, “See how easy that was.”
A single brow rose and a devastating smile lifted her lips as she murmured, “Anymore.”
“Liv.” Elliot growled, sitting back on his legs, and tracking her with his glare as she walked around him towards the bathroom door.
Twisting the lock, she looked over her shoulder at him, smile still flirting across her lips and saturating her voice when she asked, “You coming?”
And he followed. As he always would.