Work Text:
It’s not clear who kissed who first that day back in January.
(It was her).
It didn’t matter, really. Someone reached for someone (her, he tells her, it was definitely her - her hand fisted into his shirt, her fingers curling and gripping) and someone took that first step in (again, her - he stood, steady and even, hands at her waist; every muscle tensed, every nerve fiber screaming, waiting) and someone - one of them, him or her, who knows - closed that final bit of distance.
(Her, her lips not tentative at all this time, crashing against his and taking what she’d wanted for so long).
It was messy and raw; eager and needy. There was no way to tell who with how frantic it felt. Hands all over the place, all teeth and tongue and it didn’t matter, really, who kissed who first.
(It had to be her).
What mattered came in a year after, when they did know.
—
Winter (her)
He (doesn’t quite) kiss her in her office for the first time, and immediately knows it will be the last time. Not the last time kissing her - he’s well aware they’re past the point where that sort of relatively minimal error in judgment could cost him that much - but the last time (not quite) kissing her there, at least, in the middle of her office.
He brought lunch, is the thing.
He’d walked two blocks in some sort of icy, slushy disgusting mess, and his feet are wet and a little frozen as he raps once on the glass pane in her office door.
“Elliot?”
She doesn’t bother to hide the surprise in her voice when he walks in. She’s sitting at her desk, her glasses low on her nose, her laptop screen open. There’s a stack of brown paper folders covering one side of her desk; and there’s another folder splayed open on the other.
Her eyebrows are raised to the fucking roof.
“You said you hadn’t eaten,” he tells her now, a way too big brown paper bag in his hands. It’s got handles, even; little ropes of twine twisted together. Everything is packaged so nicely, now. Branded wax paper wrapping and a big fancy bag and all of this for a small container and two different choices of bread.
He shrugs as he puts it on the one clear corner of her desk. There’s barely any room for how big the fucking bag is.
He still hasn’t taken off his leather gloves. Underneath them, he flexes his fingers once, twice, and tells her.
“I brought chicken salad.”
(And two different kinds of chips, because he wasn’t sure. Sun Chips, because they seemed healthy-ish, and she’d been bemoaning not having a real vegetable in days last night on the phone.
And a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos because he knows what she wants after five days on the worst kind of case).
“Oh, I - ”
Olivia clears her throat and slides her glasses down and off, chin tilted up towards him. She doesn’t move from her spot at all. There’s an almost frown playing at the corners of her mouth; one that she quickly rearranges. He’s caught her off guard, he knows. This thing is still fresh enough - or, as fresh as something can be after twenty five years of build up and 12 years of partnership and 3 years of whatever they weren’t doing, after he came back - and she’s adjusting, he knows.
Olivia’s voice when she finds it is just off enough. Too something he can’t quite figure out.
“El, I’m sorry, I just don’t have time. For lunch, I mean.”
She sweeps an arm down, her glasses still in one hand. Her finger catches on the back of the stack of folders, and one slides on to her laptop. She keeps looking past him, out her window. There’s not a soul out there; her whole skeleton crew of a squad out doing their jobs.
“Yeah, I - Liv, I brought it for you. I’ve got - ”
He shoves a hand in his pocket. He gets it. When he’d strolled in here five minutes ago he’d realized that for the first time since he’d been back in New York, it felt strange walking in here. He’s dating her now. It’s all different. Except - it’s all very much the same as it was a year ago, too, in theory. On some sort of professional level, at least. Same photos on her desk, same mugs on the ledge behind her. Same awards that he’d missed displayed on her wall.
“I’ve got to get back to work. It’s just one sandwich,” he assures her.
(Two, really, there’s enough for two. One for now, one for later.
All for her).
He watches the realization dawn on her face. He sees how it flusters her. They’re fucking (dating) and he’s spending the night and he’s bringing her lunch for no reason; not as a means to an end, not as a grab for her time. Not so he can sit across from her and talk to her and brush his ankle against hers, every so often. Just because she’d said she hadn’t had time to stop for a break when she’d stolen two minutes to answer his call an hour ago.
She blinks up at him.
“Oh, ok, well - ”
Olivia looks at the brown bag at the edge of her desk.
“Thank you.”
He can feel his chest flush. He feels one hundred feet tall, towering over her desk, bringing her chicken salad with a choice of brioche or a pre-split. croissant. He feels so acutely unsure of what to do sometimes. He had her thighs around his neck last night; his tongue buried inside her, but bringing her lunch on a Tuesday is throwing them both all the way off.
He does the wrong thing. Predictably, somehow, he does the wrong thing.
He coughs to buy himself time, hand sliding out of his pocket to make a balled up fist in front of his face.
Elliot looks at her.
He takes four steps around the side of her desk and he presses a kiss to her temple and he feels her go stiff; feels the little gasp she lets out and then feels her whole body tense, and shit. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He just goes on after that, already so far in the goddamn trenches that the incoming mud is going to end up burying him anyway. Elliot tells her - too chipper and one hundred percent in the wrong octave - as he cringes right there, face hovering; chin still against her forehead.
“Well, back to work for me.”
Then he turns on his heel and he leaves and he is pretty sure, then, that he’s going to have to wait at least six months before he graces the one-six with his presence again.
And he’ll probably need to remind himself to keep his lips to himself.
“Fuck.”
He mutters it as the doors of the elevator close him in.
He gives himself the ride down to feel sorry for himself. He shouldn’t, actually, feel even the slightest bit sorry for himself. It’s awkward, sometimes. Twenty five years of not giving in too hard to the thing sometimes makes certain little pieces of the thing that should be light as air feel weighed down.
Decades of pretending to be normal about the other makes the real normal seem fucking absurd.
He tugs his gloves off, finally, as he stands there in silence. Elliot is all the way down to the basement level, through the parking garage door - phone in his hand, thumb on the screen, ready to slide it open and text something - when he hears her.
“Elliot.”
Then her heels on the cement, moving too fast. Click, click, click. Click, clickclickclickclick. Her left heel drags just a little, still. He can hear it as he turns around, mouth falling open to say something. Sorry, maybe. Didn’t meant to overstep the -
“Thank you.”
She looks flushed, he thinks, as she closes the gap. Like she’s rushed all the way to get here. Her voice is a little strained too - a little too low, a little too hoarse. She’s been working for days, he knows.
He looks back at her; one hand on his phone, the other trying to shove itself back into that familiar front jacket pocket. He stares back at her for one beat. Her breath comes curling out; visible in the air in the freezing cold garage.
She doesn’t look mad, he realizes.
“You’re - ”
She’s on him just like that, then. Before he can even finish, she’s kissing him; her arm wrapping around his neck and holding him there. He gasps - literally gasps, completely taken aback - as it registers, then he’s kissing her back. Eagerly, happily, dragging his tongue against her bottom lip; grinning when she nips at his in return.
He uses the hand he was about to sulkily shove in his pocket to anchor her to him. He keeps moving the whole time he’s kissing her, nudging them back until they’re just out of view. Her back ends up against the cement wall, and he keeps moving then, too; his hand sliding low, moving from the small of her back to the front of her waist. At her waistband, where she’s warm and soft and plant, the hem of her blouse catching on his forefinger when he ruckd up the fabric.
When he rocks against her once, a low growl in his throat that he can’t swallow, it’s her turn to gasp and break her mouth away.
“El - we have to - ”
It doesn’t last long, that kiss. When it’s over, they’re both breathing hard, her chest pressed against his in the dark.
“You’re welcome,” he tells her finally; his forehead pressed against hers. It’s too smug by far. He’s going to have to sit in his car for ten minutes and think about anything else but the slide of his thumb against the waistband of her pants before he can drive.
She shakes her head against his. Her nose is cold; skin already chilled as it bumps against his. He grins as he goes on.
“For lunch, I mean.”
—
Spring (her)
Shockingly, she hears it directly from him.
“It’s, uh - ”
She can hear it, somehow, when he winces. There is the sharp inhale of air as he tries to move; the low hiss through gritted teeth as he bites back a groan. She can see it right there in her mind’s eyes. His narrowed eyes, his slammed shut mouth. His head tilted up at the ceiling as he tells her.
“It’s my knee. Can’t bend it to drive for a day or two.”
It was a bad takedown running after some suspect, he explains. The ground was wet, one of the first spring rains mixing with the oil from the cars on the ground. Reyes brought him home. He calls her less than twenty minutes after he’s inside his own doors, trying hard not to cancel dinner plans with her and Noah at the last minute. He could take an Uber, he tells her, but she tuts and tells him to just lay low. By the end of it his voice is tired. She tells him goodbye, and she puts her phone down on her desk.
She makes a split second decision.
One more year and she won’t be able to do this, she knows - Noah is already starting to protest Martha’s presence, and she’ll have to give into his independence. He’ll want to stay alone, when she’s not home. She won’t be able to lie to her son about work to go visit Elliot, not the way she can to poor Martha.
(Who knows where they’ll be in one more year, though. Maybe it won’t matter as much. Maybe - ).
She lets herself in; sliding her boots off at the door.
“Out here.”
He calls it out before she can say his name. Almost like he’d been expecting her. Growth, she thinks as she drops her keys in the bowl by his door. Growth is the thing that has them acting like this. Elliot’s not trying to walk it off. He’s not trying to grimace his way through standing in her kitchen while she shreds a rotisserie chicken.
Growth is the thing that has her here tonight, too. It’s the thing that had her make that split second decision at her desk, when she’d realized he’d be sitting exactly like he is. Wanting, but not expecting.
Although - he’d left the door to the patio open.
Damp, nighttime spring air drifts in. She can smell the rain from earlier that had made the ground slick.
“You need anything?”
She calls it out, pausing in the soft light of his kitchen. They are in that weird phase in spring, where the weather is almost always unsure, and she never can tell when the sun is supposed to set. It’s still up right now, but it’s fading fast, and Elliot is outside, half cast in shadows.
“I’m fine, just… ”
She can see the ice wrapped around his knee.
Olivia sets her bag on his counter.
She palms her phone, just in case, sliding it into her back pocket. She walks slowly to the back door, pausing in the frame and looking over at Elliot. Elliot, in sweatpants rolled up at the knee, and a hoodie only half zipped up; slouched in the plastic chair he still hasn’t bothered to upgrade. There’s a tumbler full of something dark on the table.
He went with whiskey instead of Advil for the pain.
He looks up at her as she takes one step out.
“Just…?”
She asks, and waits for an answer. The ground is cooler than the air, and it seeps through her sock covered feet. Elliot shifts in the chair, his eyes on her as he holds out a hand. There’s a smile playing at the corner of his mouth; the right side twitching up.
He’s happy she’s here, he knows.
“Just you is good.”
The thought of that; of Elliot, sitting here in the dark achy and drinking whiskey and wanting her shouldn’t do what it does. It shouldn’t make her chest feel tight, shouldn’t make her feel like there’s something unfurling inside her. The Olivia of three years ago, of six or seven or eight or even fifteen, maybe, would say let him, she knows. Let him sit in the dark and ache for her.
Maybe it’s the opposite of growth that has her here tonight.
Sometimes she thinks Barba was more right than wrong.
“You hit your face, too?”
She takes two steps outside. Now that she’s closer, she can see the cut on his forehead. Nothing he hasn’t had a thousand times before. Too small for stitches, too wide for a band-aid.
His answer is an inelegant grunt, deep in his throat.
“Knocked it on my way down, yeah.”
She steps into Elliot, and his space. His fingers catch the inside of her wrist, then slide up, curling all the way around. It’s light, the way he holds it. She would only have to sway a little and she’d be out of his grasp.
She lets him hold her there instead.
She lets him tug her in between the space of his legs. His palm is cool against the heel of her own. One more step in and his head is almost against her. When Elliot looks up at her, the jut of his chin ghosts against her stomach, blue eyes softening as soon as she reaches out to trail a thumb underneath the jagged, torn skin.
It’s getting cold, she thinks.
They should go inside.
Instead they stay for a moment, breathing.
“It still hurt?” she asks him eventually, a half nod of her head at his knee. He sighs, and she can feel that. She can feel him move, and feel the warm air he blows out through her shirt. She tries not to shiver at the opposing sensations. It’s warmer outside than she’d thought, but it’s getting chilly.
“A little,” he admits. “My head feels worse than my knee, actually.”
Olivia hums, and keeps looking down.
“You need me to kiss it and make it all better, or - ”
It gets another grin out of him, big and wide, the corners of his mouth turning up. It goes all the way to his eyes, soft and crinkling around the edges. She lets him pull her all the way in; his hand dropping her wrist as he reaches around her and agrees.
“I do, actually.”
So - she does.
Olivia dips her head low, and presses a kiss right there. Just once, just lightly, then she pulls away.
“Hmmm?”
She starts to ask him, and it’s altogether predictable when Elliot shakes his head, and tilts his head back even further. It puts him at a godawful angle, his neck craned back, but it would let him brush his lips against hers easily if he wanted.
He doesn’t.
Elliot waits, chin against the slope of her stomach, for her. His eyes stay with hers the whole time; shining, even in the dark.
She kisses him.
Just once, just lightly, barely a brush of her lips,but she doesn’t draw back after. She stays there, close to him, her bottom lip just catching his as she asks.
“Now?”
There’s a spark in his eyes, hooded and intent on her own. He murmurs his answer, low and heated against the curve of her mouth.
“Almost.”
Well.
She kisses him again and again and again after that, her neck heavy and her own knees aching; until he winces and gasps when he shifts up to meet her. She pulls back, then, and shakes her head.
“We should - Elliot - ”
His hands tighten on her hip, and she can feel him start. The ‘I’m fine, I’m good, let’s keep going, please baby,’ that she knows he’ll say. He would be, she knows. She could slide on top of him here; one leg on the ground, one thigh around him and they could test the limit of the plastic chair and of his swollen knee all at once.
Why though, when they don’t have to?
She grins, and catches his chin with her thumb.
“We should go inside.”
It’s easier, inside. Olivia lets him settle on the middle cushion of the couch; watching as he unwraps the huge thing of his ice from his knee. It occurs to her as she’s sliding her own pants off and tugging off her shirt to ask if he went to get it checked out; or if he just came home and did it himself.
The latter, she thinks, is the answer.
She never does ask.
Elliot reaches for her; pulls her in and close with his arms around her waist. She goes easily, mouth finding his again as she straddles him. She can feel him through the fabric of his sweatpants; the thick length of his cock pressing into the soft curves of her belly.
“You good like this?”
She breathes it out and he nods, his hand settling on the back of her thigh, anchoring her close. His hand tangles in the back of her hair for just a moment, an open mouthed groan as she sweeps her mouth against his before he can answer.
“I’m good. And if I wasn’t - ”
He pants a little, hips rocking against her, and leans forward to run his mouth down her neck. The hand that had been tangled in the back of her hair follows suit, an almost mirror of his mouth as it slides down the nape of her neck. It comes to pause on her shoulder; thumb resting against the hollow, almost meeting his lips. She can feel the drag of his skin against hers; the rasp of his beard when he tilts his head up to tell her.
“I’d probably lie,” he admits hoarsely.
They kiss for a long time after that.
Kissing Elliot has been a surprise for her, in these last months. With all the intensity he brings to everything in his life, she’d assumed kissing him would be much the same. Always raw, always impassioned; always tongue and teeth and claw marks, short bursts of consuming until they get to the goal.
But he surprises her.
(He’s spent all this time surprising her).
Sometimes their kisses are raw, and hungry. Untamed and eager and wanting. Tonight is different, though.
He kisses her earnestly tonight. The gentle sweep of his lips against hers; the delicate slide of his tongue when her mouth falls open. It’s not that they’ve never done this, but she can’t recall a time that they’ve done this for quite this long. She loses track of time as they stay right there, and only feels. Her thighs, warm against his. How hot his chest is against her own. The rough pads of his fingertips trailing up her spine.
She loses track of time and they both let it build; the warm, slow fire low and deep.
Somewhere along the way, she’d unzipped his hoodie, and she revels in the slide of his skin against hers. Heated, and slick as their mouths chase each other; as his hand falls down to the back of her waist to steady them both.
She hears the sound of rain on his back windows; gentle patters on the glass as his mouth finally leaves her and moves lower. She leans back to unclasp her bra and he surges forward; an almost dart as he claims a nipple with his mouth, and her breast with his palm.
She gasps out an ‘El’ as he does it again and again and she reaches between them. All the time spent before - gently kissing, her center pressed so deliciously against the steel of his cock - has gotten her there. Normally he’d flip her; manhandle her just enough on the couch and then take her with his mouth and his fingers but she doesn’t need that tonight.
“Fuck, Olivia,” he rasps out against the swell of her breast as she slides her hand down and frees his cock from his sweatpants. She wraps a hand around his cock; grasping. He moans when she twists and tightens; hips jerking into her touch. She does it again; strokes him as his mouth works her.
Outside the spring rain comes harder; angrier. Not a gentle patter anymore as she raises herself up, her knees digging into the meat of his thigh. She guides him through her folds, eyes meeting his as she lets him linger right there for a moment. She watches as she lets him feel it - what he did, what they did - with this slow gentle night on his couch. She’s slick and heated and wet and he groans as the tip of him presses in.
She kisses him again. She nips and she sucks as she sinks all the way down, drawing back only when he’s fully buried inside; so she can hear the thick, guttural groan he gives when she starts to move. His hands tighten at her hips as they start to roll against the steel of his body.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
He urges her on, then returns his mouth to her; hand at the back of her skull. She reaches for the back of the couch to steady herself and give herself leverage as she starts to move faster.
“So perfect, baby.”
He whispers the words out. His apartment is quiet, only the hum of his kitchen appliances, and the sounds of their bodies meeting; and the harsh rain against the windows in the dark.
She feels it build; heated and tight in her belly as he rocks backs against her. He fills her again and again, so perfect and right and she can only manage another groan of his name as she tilts her head back.
His hands move to her back; to her thigh, and her own hand slides between them. She almost doesn’t need it - the angle of his cock against her clit has her almost right there - but that last bit of gentle pressure, messy and erratic but just right is enough. She shatters; his head to her chest as her cunt clenches around him and he’s right there too. He bucks into her as she moans out his name and thrusts down and then he’s pulsing inside her; spilling himself with a growl of her name.
She collapses against him and when they both catch their breath, he kisses her sweetly; gently in the dark of his living room. He tilts his head back on the cushion when he’s done, and sweeps her hair back and away. He kisses the skin there, right between her neck and her shoulder; in that spot where she’d stood at his counter this weekend and massaged, digging her own fingertips in. ‘Slept on it funny,’ she’d told him. His lips are soft, barely moving.
There’s a loud crack of thunder she can hear. She doesn’t see the lightning, her eyes too heavy to open. It’s the first storm of the season, she thinks.
“Better?” she murmurs, voice lazy and warm.
“Much.”
She drives them both back to her place after, her windshield wipers working double time in the rain, and ice on his knee the whole time.
There’s no reason he should stay back there, alone.
—
Summer (her)
In July, she kisses him first in public.
In July, she lets herself miss him out loud.
Six months finds them in a comfortable place. It’s not stagnant, really. They’re together more often than they’re not when their jobs and their responsibilities and their lives allow. Three nights a week at her place becomes something usual. Four nights isn’t abnormal.
Five nights a week feels like a gift.
“How is it?” she asks him, four nights after he leaves for a trip. It’s awful, he wants to say. It’s a million degrees here. I can’t sleep in this bed. It’s so quiet at night. I need your white noise machine, I guess, and the exact weight of your thigh slung over mine.
“It’s - ”
He sighs. The air in his hotel room feels stifling. It can’t keep up, he knows. He turned it as far down as he could, and there’s barely a breeze. He can hear in her kitchen, at home. The sound of water being turned on; the clank of plates in her sink. Her Alexa, in the background, playing that song Noah won’t stop listening to. He knows they had fish for dinner. Salmon, she’d written on their menu board last week.
“It’s hot,” he murmurs eventually, sitting at the edge of his bed in Stockton.
He wonders how much of his dinner Noah pushed around on his plate, trying to hide fish between bites of broccoli.
“It’s awful here, too,” she replies after a moment. “I think Fin went through four shirts today.”
The sound of water’s gone quiet. She tells him, a little, about her day. About the heat in New York - muggy and thick, the kind that has her shedding her blazer as soon as she walks in her door, he knows. About Noah’s day camp in the park being canceled; too much heat and humidity to take the risk outside in the parks. He can picture her son’s shit-eating grin when she’d told him he could spend his day at home, instead. Hourly check-ins, and a limit on video games he’d most likely ignored. Do not leave, she would have stressed to him as she stood in the door, hand around her phone. Do not go anywhere.
Olivia tells him about all of that.
He listens, quietly, laying down eventually; knees bent over the edge of his bed. Underneath his feet, the threadbare carpet of the hotel feels scratchy.
“How was your meeting?”
Her voice is muffled for a moment as she asks, like she’s got the phone tucked to her shoulder.
“Long. I gotta, actually - ” He sits back up, scrubbing the heel of his palm down his face. Twenty minutes with her on the phone has passed quickly. “I gotta get ready and go back out for another one, actually.”
He can hear the soft whoosh of her refrigerator door as she pulls it open, the glass of the condiment bottles knocking together. He wonders if she’d finished off the bottle of white wine they’d poured last week. It was too dry for him, but she liked it.
“Lucky you.”
Olivia’s voice is low as she says it, that end of the day husk that he loves. On her busier days it’s more evident. On her busier days they’ll sit on the couch after dinner, his feet on her coffee table, bodies touching from their shoulders to their knees.
The strain on her vocal cords shouldn’t make him miss home, he thinks.
He can feel it, though. He’s irritable and gruff and he just wants to be back. Back there, in her kitchen. His bare feet on her hardwood floor, his elbows on her granite; cool to the touch. Not here, where the second he moves too fast in his room, he’ll start to drip sweat.
“Lucky me, yeah,” he grumbles eventually. He breathes out a huff of air as he pushes himself off of the bed. “Fortieth fucking meeting with these idiot Feds and we’re still nowhere close.”
He’s being ridiculous.
It’s been less than a week.
There’s a small pause on the other end of the line, then he hears the distinct sound of her chuckle. Low, and throaty for just a moment and he can see it, somehow - Olivia shaking her head.
“You gonna make it there, El? You sound - ”
There’s the delicate sound of thin glass on her counter, then the sound of a cork being pulled before she goes on.
“You sound a little tense to me.”
“Ah - shit - ”
Instantly, he feels like a jackass. She’s worked all day, dealing with the worst kind of crap in the fetid, disgusting summer in the city. Her kid probably whined about dinner. Her hip probably aches and she’s probably swallowed down ibuprofen all day, fighting off a headache from the heat.
“It’s fine, I’m - I’m fine.”
He scrambles a little, even as he starts to get ready. He tugs his suit jacket off the hanger on the back of the bathroom door, and it’s loud enough, wood against wood and the metal of the hanger rattling, that he almost doesn’t hear her laugh again. He does though, and he settles a little, waiting.
“No, El - ” A little louder this time as she goes on. “I’m - Jesus, Elliot.” He can tell she’s taking a sip of something before she goes on. That white wine, he thinks. “I’m kidding, I’m - ”
She sighs then. He can hear the rustle of movement as she starts walking. Her voice is quieter; more reserved as she wanders somewhere. The living room, he realizes, when he hears the sound of her settling into the leather.
“I’ve been in a rotten mood all day, too,” she admits, finally. She hums, softly; just in the back of her throat. That noise that drives him a little bit wild and he thinks she knows it.
He knows she knows it, actually.
“Yeah?” he asks her as he palms his key card from the dresser. For a second, he panics, glancing around and trying to find his cell phone, before he remembers.
“Yeah, it’s hot, and - ”
She clears her throat. He listens as she takes a sip, and then tells him matter of fact.
“It’s hot, and I’ve been sleeping like shit.”
Then, like she knows she needs to hit him over the head with it.
“I guess I got used to you taking up three-fourths of the bed, Stabler.”
He can picture it exactly, right now. Her, exactly. The glass of wine in her hand on her couch. Her loose pajama pants and her shirt as she sits, and tries to find the coldest spot on the couch. Her smile at the joke she’d made, the soft lines around her eyes crinkling over the rim of the glass.
Her fingers twisting into the chain of the compass, as she misses him too.
Something lifts just a little.
“That so, Benson?”
There’s another huff of laughter on her part; then a reminder not to let it go to his head. Then there’s about thirty seconds of him telling her exactly what he misses about her (her ass in those sleep shorts, that body wash she’d started to use last month - her mouth, even when she’s being a smart ass) before they hang up.
Two days later, he steps off the airplane at JFK.
The wall of hot air hits him as soon as he steps close to the jet bridge. It’s that horrendously stereotypical type of situation. He can practically hear the flight attendant gritting her teeth as the passengers in front of him bitch; trying to keep her tone even as she explains that the air conditioner ‘just can’t keep on days like this’ in that temporary, movable space.
He can feel the sweat already dripping. Down his neck; in the small of his back. Behind his knees, and on top of his head. His armpits are already damp from being jammed into the space by the window, where the sun crept through the window of the person behind him.
“Bullshit.”
Behind him the Fed who flew back on the same flight grumbles, shifting his weight back and forth impatiently.
“A million goddamn degrees and we’re stuck in line.”
Elliot turns on his phone as he waits.
They’re twenty-three minutes early.
He should be in exactly the same mood as the guy behind him. One week in the middle of Nowhere, California; and they’d gotten nowhere. A waste of a trip. A waste of his time. A waste of a week he could have been back here, doing his job and getting somewhere, and then to Olivia’s at night. And now they’re standing here, cooking in some jet bridge door frame, heated up like two hot dogs in a microwave. The humidity is leaking in already, making the air feel like a thick, wet blanket every time he breathes.
He’s literally dripping.
His knee aches.
But -
But when he’d powered his phone on, two messages had popped up.
‘On my way’ was the first one.
Generic and sent, he knew, from the highway. When she was running a little late, not able to get out of the door of her office and panicking a little, but not willing to pull over and type out a whole text.
‘Here. At the Dunkin Donuts in the Arrivals Hall’
It’s that one that has him grinning. He probably looks like an idiot - lovesick and silly, staring at his phone - but he just doesn’t care. Even as he has to use the back of his hand to wipe the sweat away from his eyes, and the line finally starts to move, he looks down and smiles.
He lets the anticipation take hold as they move. He lets that soft swoop in his stomach play out again and again as he strides through the airport. The bag on his shoulder hits him over and over and over, but he keeps going.
She’s so close, he knows.
He grabs his bags as soon as he can find them; his one checked rolled one trailing behind him as he tries not to run. “All areas of the terminal have been designated as smoke free” booms over the loudspeaker and this, he thinks, is as close to a romance novel as they’ll ever get. His feet are moving, and his girl is waiting, somewhere in this mess of an airport and he can say that now, even just to himself because she missed him too.
He rounds the last corner, and she’s there.
“I said - ”
He can hear, and he watches as she sees him too. Her phone to her ear, a white paper mug in her hand as she gestures, and shakes her head, her eyebrows raised.
He takes a step forward.
“Slow down, Velasco.”
God, she looks good.
Hair pinned up with a clip, conceding defeat to the heat, and her blazer slung over her arm. Her eyes never leave his as she goes on, and he moves even closer. She takes a sip of her coffee and she smiles at him.
There’s just a hint of lipstick on the white plastic lid.
Olivia is calm as she goes on, but her eyes dance a bit, corners of them crinkling at the sudden way he rubs a thumb over his lips and looks down. She goes on, all business, even as she grins.
“You need to code it for a stat DNA - if you don’t write stat, they’ll shove it in a box, and it’ll end up on a shelf somewhere, Detective.”
He missed her so much.
He waits, and he watches and when she hangs up, finally, she slides her phone in her bag and looks back at him.
“Sorry, I - ”
She shakes her head, then smiles at him. Simple and almost sweet, her eyes bright as she shrugs.
“Work,” she explains, even though she doesn’t have to.
And it’s not as dramatic as one of those movie scenes, when it happens. It’s not the two of them meeting halfway through an airport terminal and kissing madly; desperately, while the whole world blurs around them. It’s just Elliot, letting his bag fall a little on his arm as he closes the gap. It’s his hand around her waist, then a pause as they both consider.
There’s people everywhere, standing and walking; moving. It wouldn’t hurt his feelings if she didn’t.
But - it’s her head tilting back, and her raising herself up just a little, and it’s the brush of her lips against his. It’s Olivia deepening it as he curls his body around her as close as he can; chasing that dizzying feeling for just a moment too long.
It’s his cheek brushing hers when they break apart, well aware of their surroundings.
It’s her, not caring for a moment.
“Missed you,” he tells her, as she nods, and it’s her hand, palm flat on the side of his face as she kisses him quickly again.
“Missed you, too.”
In the car, it’s harsher; needier. He’d offered to drive and she’d told him yes, but they don’t even make it out of the lot for ten minutes. He has her leaning over the console, chasing his mouth with her own as she shows him that she’d missed him. The sun bakes down on them, even in the late afternoon sun, turning both their skin pink despite the full blast of the air conditioning.
The nape of her neck is damp; strands of hair sticking.
He loves it.
It’s messy.
Olivia is impatient. Demanding, even, as he groans into the kiss and she surges closer, fingers curled tight into the fabric of his shirt, keeping her steady. She barely stops to breathe; kisses his mouth, his neck; nips at his jaw as he growls.
They’re too old to fuck in this car, he thinks, but -
“Need to get home,” she demands as she breaks away, sliding back into her seat, seat belt clicking loudly.
—
Fall (her)
She’d always wondered who would kiss first in a fight like this.
She knows now, maybe. This time at least.
The thing about being with Elliot that she likes is that he’s still Elliot, somehow. He’s not this different version of him, and he doesn’t try to water it down; even if he does try to temper it, sometimes.
He’s still Elliot is probably also the frustrating thing, too.
He’s still Elliot, and he still has a temper and she still likes to dig in her heels and predictably - the sort of predictable that would come if therapists made top ten lists of most likely outcomes if you took these two particular individuals with this history and these issues - when they do fight, it’s with their teeth bared.
Still.
And this one has been building.
For weeks, over silly stuff and serious stuff, both.
It’s about everything, really.
It’s about Ginny McCann standing in the hall last week and inviting him to a post Thanksgiving weekend lunch/dinner/afternoon meal that she does every year and that she’d promised would be a ‘very low key thing, I’ll just make an easy roast and we can celebrate, just bring yourselves.’
“Sounds like a nice little tradition,” he’d answered, and Olivia didn’t know if he was saying yes or if he was saying maybe and then he never did clarify; not with her, and not with Ginny.
Ever.
It’s also about five days ago when his brother had let his eyes linger on her tits for a moment too long and how he’d gone quiet and stony. It was how he muttered that he didn’t ‘like that, needs to learn to keep his eyes on your fucking face’ in the car, after, then tried to pretend like he hadn’t said it.
It’s how he’d stewed about it for four goddamn days.
It was the time of year.
It’s how he managed to piss her off three nights ago when she’d been trying to talk over a case that was forcing her hand while they made dinner. He’d been nodding along, listening, stealing thin slices of bell pepper off the cutting board, and then out of nowhere he’d shaken his head, and opened his mouth and told her.
“You’re coming at it backwards, Liv. You gotta - ”
He’d looked over at her, and given her the rest of his unsolicited advice. Like she wasn’t a Captain in the NYPD, and she didn’t know how to do her fucking job. She takes his advice all the time. He’s still her partner. Still, it gets right under her skin.
“You gotta get cagey with these assholes. You can’t play so nice all the time.”
She’d let him finish slicing, after that.
It’s almost ten days of bad moods, and feeling off.
It’s all of it, and it hits a boiling point on the drive home after work the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, when he sees the text from Ginny pop up on her dashboard screen.
It’s a fucking paragraph, of course. Ten million goddamn exclamation points and she can practically hear the other woman asking, that too chipper voice as she does it.
‘Just checking in - know you said you weren’t sure when we spoke before, but wanted to get a final count!! You, Noah, and Elliot for Saturday? Or just Noah and you?’
They read it at the same time.
They both go silent for three red lights.
Beside her, Elliot makes some sort of noise. Something small, and know it all, and then he’s muttering it, gruff and shitty and a little too loud.
“Figures.”
Immediately, she balks. Straightens up in her seat and raises her eyebrows and it feels good, honestly, to push into this. They’ve been dancing around both of their moods for weeks. Miscommunication, Lindstrom would say. Better than no communication, but only just.
“Excuse me?” she asks him as they pull up to the light.
His response is immediate. Snapped right back at her, with his eyes straight ahead.
“It’s nothing. It’s fine.”
She’s silent for a moment as the light turns green, and they make it one block closer.
“Is it about the dinner, Elliot? Because -
She stops, shaking her head. She’s torn between digging into this now, or letting it go. For the most part, since they’ve started this Elliot has been rational. He’s been good, and she knows he’s been really trying to be the fucking picture of penance he should fucking be, here.
But he’s still Elliot.
And they still are who they are.
She pushes in. Right at the tender edge of the bruise, where it’s yellow and faded but still makes you wince with any pressure.
“Because, Jesus, Elliot - you were the one who didn’t say yes or no. ”
She hears the creak of leather as he shifts in his seat; the harsh suck in of air through his teeth. She listens to him breathe, uneven and unsteady. She looks over, and sees exactly what she’s expected to. His jaw working as he tries to shut himself up; his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Then, she sees the moment it happens.
He breaks.
“Are you - you’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Liv.”
Finally, he fucking breaks and he can’t stop when it happens, she knows. Just like she can’t stop the way her nerves feel like fire at his words, and how it feels like this strange relief.
“I get that you don’t want to start traditions with me, Liv, but I gotta tell you - ”
And that is so ridiculously wrong; so insanely fucking wrong that she’s stunned into silence for a moment. Elliot goes on, voice suddenly changing to that fake attempt at casual in the most infuriating way. He says it as he backs her SUV into her spot, hand on her headrest, neck craned as he ignores the rear view camera and his voice, calm and collected in the worst way.
“I figured I’d let you make the decision, but fuck, Olivia - I didn’t realize you really didn’t want me there, after all.”
The nerve, Jesus Christ. He is so -
“Are you - Elliot, are you kidding me?”
She huffs it out, but doesn’t wait for his answer. She opens the car door hard, and she knows he can hear the loud staccato of her heels on the concrete. She’s three steps behind him to start, but out of habit maybe, he holds open the door to her building for her and then it’s him trailing her. Behind her, she hears him say her name, once.
“Olivia.”
Elliot closes the distance with a hand to her elbow. She pulls it free; a quick jerk forward.
“It’s not the - ”
She holds out her hand for her keys. She drops her voice low so no doormen can hear. The last thing she needs is to be gossip again. Captain gets jumped on the street, Captain makes out with him in her parking spot when we’re coming back from break, Captain fights with her boyfriend in the lobby.
“It’s not the time or the place. Just go home, and we’ll figure it out later. ”
She watches as he shakes his head. He always was so fucking stubborn, she thinks. A bulldog with a meaty bone, unwilling to give it up until it was stripped all the way clean.
Some things never change.
“That’s - that’s bullshit, Liv. You - do you want to have this fight or not?”
She pulls open the door to her building, and she turns back to him. He watches for a moment as her anger turns to consideration. The wind behind them is frigid, now; the sun gone and only the cold angry night left. Brown eyes narrow, and her lips purse. She does, she thinks. She wants to have this fight. She nods, once, then tells him.
“Upstairs, ok? Just - upstairs.”
They both fall silent as they walk inside. He is right behind her, almost crowding her as they make their way into her place. The door barely shuts before he’s there, tugging his jacket off even as he confronts her. They have an hour to finish this before Jason’s mom will be double parked out front, hazard lights blinking as Noah runs in the doors.
“You didn’t let me finish before.”
He mutters it now.
She’s toeing her boots off, her jacket still half on and it’s absurd, the wide open intimacy in the middle of this particular moment. Her socks out; him bending down to undo a lace on his boot. Both of them slinging fully laced barbs back and forth.
“I know it’s not about the dinner. The lunch - whatever. I’m not - ”
He shakes his head as he stands back up, toe of one boot on the heel of another, peeling them off.
“I’m a lot of things, Liv, but I’m not stupid.” He eyes her, then, direct and intense. “At least not about you.”
It’s fucking crazy that he says it. Crazy that he thinks he knows her that well, when he did what he did. When he left, then left again; then left a third fucking time. She hasn’t thought about it like that in over nine months, but when he says shit like that, it all comes right back.
She tells him exactly that.
“That’s real fucking rich, Elliot.” She moves into the kitchen as she says it. She drapes her coat on the back of the chair and shakes her head as she turns back. He’s so goddamn close, right on her ass, that when she turns, finger pointed out, it runs right against the hard plane of his chest. “You have no idea.”
He backs off, two hands up. There’s a pile of dirty dishes in her kitchen sink from this morning, coffee and hot cocoa mugs mixed in with stacks of bowls and plates.
Elliot starts to run the water.
“Really, so. ”
Behind the small window above the sink, she swears it’s starting to flurry. It’s too early for snow, but here it is. Small, angry little flakes, barely illuminated this far up above the city. In front of the sink Elliot rolls his sleeves even further up.
“So this isn’t about you being, I don’t know - ”
He tests the water with a finger. His voice is higher than she’s heard since he slammed back into her life. It reminds her of a million years ago, when this was all that they had.
“This isn’t you being some sort of goddamn way because I’d like to be there for a pot roast at the McCanns.”
It isn’t. It is, and it isn’t. It’s all of it, she wants to scream. It’s you, sometimes. It’s me, too. She grabs a dirty plate from the table, and makes her way over.
“You cannot be serious. You think that’s it, Elliot?”
He’d like to, he said. That’s the worst part. He’d like to be there. He’d like to be here and he’d like her to write it down on her calendar in pen, and make it a plan - a late lunch in the suburbs after Thanksgiving.
He wants to be there.
He wants to be here, washing her fucking dishes.
And maybe she’d just wanted him to say yes to Ginny right away and make it easier on her. Maybe she wanted him to not be a jealous asshole because his older brother looked at her in a low cut shirt. Maybe she didn’t mind that he was a jealous asshole, and that’s still unnerving two and half decades later, even when she wears a compass the size of a sun that screams ELLIOT STABLER to anyone with eyes. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to give her advice when she was trying to tamp down her anger without letting him see it.
“It’s all of it, it’s - ”
She sets the plate in the sink, her elbow right up against his. She reaches all the way in. She wraps her hand around his wrist stilling him and waits until he turns, nose to almost goddam nose with her.
The water’s still running.
“It’d be a lot easier if I knew you’d just said yes. So I could make plans.”
Jesus. Her own words surprise her. The logical part of her knew he’d wanted to go. It is the buried thing deep inside her; her own id’s worst fear. She almost snorts, right out loud, thinking of Lindstrom reading off a checklist.
Next to her, Elliot pulls his free hand out of the water. She’d expected, she realizes, some sort of deference. Instead it’s his hand, reaching for her - sopping wet, soap bubbles between the lengths of his fingers - and it is there; fluid and fast, soaking through the fabric on her shoulder, as he stares right back at her.
“You know…Liv, you have to know. ”
She can’t hear him, she realizes. She can’t hear him say it. If she does, she’s afraid she’ll need him to say it all the time. Lid peeled back, a container of promises she’d told herself she didn’t need inside.
She reaches out, hand on his waist and she waits one beat. Her eyes stay on him. She is fighting her own urge to look past him, to where the snow is starting to swirl now; white flakes against a hazy black sky. Her throat feels tight; her mouth cotton dry.
She moves in at the same time he pulls her close.
But it’s her, in the end, who crushes her lips to his first.
They let go at the same time, though, her hand uncurling around his wrist in the sink as it grasps at his face; his sinking into the soft space of her waist, desperate and still soaking wet. The hand on her shoulder moves up and in, sliding against her neck all the way to the nape of her neck. He cradles her there, right at the base of her skull, wet fingers in her hair as he kisses her back just as hard.
Her hands find his belt buckle as her teeth sink into his lip. He groans at the first harsh sting of it, and she takes advantage of that; sliding her tongue against his, showing him.
This, she thinks. She needs him to know that she needs him. She needs him now and she needs him at dinner in Woodstock. Her need is as messy as his - impatient and urgent; his hands moving everywhere, huge and still damp - as she urges them backwards. The jolt of his ass against the island stops them both for a moment, panting and dizzy even as they both hold on.
“Liv. ”
He breathes it out, mouth still close to hers; his hand in her hair. She can feel it, already, the thing in him that wants to pull back and tell her. She still doesn’t think she can hear him say it.
He’s persistent though; dogged even as she continues. Her hands work at his fly as he shakes his head. There’s victory when it gives, but she hesitates, her hand moving up, fingertips brushing the heated skin below his navel. She can feel him react; abs tightening, but it gives him zero pause.
He’s so fucking determined.
“You have to know, Liv. I - ” She stops when he tightens his hand on her waist. Her eyes find his. They’re almost too close to her own to focus. She can feel the heat of his breath against her own lips as he tells her. “I always want to.”
He exhales it out; then drops his voice lower. Gravelly and thick, his hands holding her to him.
“I want as much as you’ll give me.”
For a moment she wonders if it would be so bad, really, if he woke up every day and reminded her in words just like that. Not too much. No need to elaborate. I always want to.
She hovers for a moment; her lips close to his again. One hand comes to rest on his chest; the other stays there; curled against the warm skin of his belly.
“Ok,” she breathes.
Elliot is made of stone, sometimes; but here tonight in his kitchen she can feel the softness in him too. That wicked, wicked vulnerability he gives her is there, in his words; and it is here, where he waits. His eyes on her, he waits.
“Ok,” she says again.
She pushes forward hard then, her hand and her lips both. She digs in where he’s warm and she crushes his mouth against hers and there’s zero surprise when he reacts; quick and hard. Elliot pushes back, returns the crush of her lips with something searing.
There.
“It’s - Elliot.”
There is need here, too, in her tongue sliding into his mouth one more time as he backs her up; her ass hitting hard against the lip of her sink. Her own way of saying: she needs to write him in pen for the rest of her life; right there in the calendar boxes on her desk. She needs his name on their goddamn dinner chalkboard. Sunday - salmon. Monday - Chicken. Tuesday - Elliot, forever.
She needs him to annoy her, and get right under her skin. She needs him to capitulate, sometimes, and she needs him to push back.
The edge of her counter digs into her back; uncomfortable and hard, likely to leave an imprint in red. Elliot is thick against her hip; already hard and hot through his pants and she slides her hand from his torso down. Down past the open zipper of his fly, the metal teeth grazing the backs of her knuckles. His boxer briefs peel back at the waist with the nudge of her knuckles and then he is there, the length of his cock in her hand. His moan is loud once again; breath hot across her lips when she grasps it, when she twists her wrist down and strokes.
“Liv - ”
She twists again, slants her lips over him to swallow his cries, but it’s impossible now. She pulls away; and his head drops, tucked in between her shoulder and her neck as he groans.
“Liv - baby - ”
Her thumb at the tip; dragged through the spot where he leaks for her already. His breaths are unsteady, and his lips stay pressed to her skin. She can feel the graze of his teeth - passing, just a glance, but there - when she strokes him base to tip rougher this time.
“Please, you have to - Liv.”
It’s too much, she knows. She needs to drag herself away from him now; peel her hand back and tuck him back in and then escape down the hall. She needs to - she has to - but for a moment she’s blinded. She wants to drain him; almost, keep stroking his cock until he’s almost right there. She wants him right on the edge and then she wants to sink to her knees and take him right in her mouth and swallow him fully. She needs him; visceral and salty and thick on her tongue; his mouth open and his call of her name ear-shattering; and she wants to look up as she does it, with his hands in her hair as she finishes him there in her kitchen.
She wants to make sure he knows.
See, she’ll say. See. I need you, after all.
You and your hand on my thigh at the McCanns, helping me keep my mouth shut every time she mentions a craft fair.
He doesn’t let her, of course.
Elliot stops her almost harshly, his big hand wrapping around her wrist, anchoring her forearm to him. Against her she can feel the way his muscles draw right; can feel him draw breath in and out even low and deep in his stomach.
“We can do this here, Liv, but - ”
He draws back even more. His eyes are heated, and dark; narrowed in the dim light of her kitchen. If they were darker, she thinks, she could see the reflection of the snow swirling outside.
“But I’m not going to make a mess in your kitchen.”
He’s gruff about it, even as he leans into her again. He releases her wrist and pulls her tight against him; her arm trapped between them as he kisses her neck. He pauses for a moment, and she feels her breath catch. It’s instinctual, always, with them.
The need balances.
His lips are on her chin, then, brushing up against the line of her jaw as he grins, and tells her, lips brushing the corner of her mouth once again.
“Wanna make a mess out of you.”
—
Winter - New Year’s Eve (him)
It pops up as an ad at the bottom of the fitness app he’d been trying to use for free. He eyes it the first two times; thinks about it and lets his thumb hover right over the picture before he sighs and keeps scrolling down.
It’s not until the third try that he goes digging a little.
It’s gorgeous, when he clicks all the way through.
A little cabin in Saugerties. It’s got two beds and a big clawfoot bathtub; windows that overlook the mountains and a huge, state of the art oven range in the kitchen. A hot tub, and an acre of space in between them and any neighbors, and when he reads the description there’s a guarantee, too, that any snowfall will be removed, he’s in.
They’ll be removed, too.
Away from the city and work and away from phones buzzing, over and over and over. Snow and sex and a chance to just be; to decompress after the traditional lead up to Christmas literal violence they deal with. It could be a break from the non-stop work and the shit with his brothers; a break from the heavy thing where she’s trying to be grateful all the time, but raising a pre-teen requires her to bite her tongue more than she ever thought she would have to.
Three days alone and apart; all while snow falls and coffee brews (in a huge, gorgeous espresso machine) and they’d just have each other for once. It’d be like being in the front seat of the sedan in the middle of February during a snowstorm, when it felt like it was just the two of them in the middle of the city; fully fucking delusional because the city was quiet for more than ten minutes.
No frozen toes this time, and less lying to himself about what he wants.
And sex.
And it’s free on New Year’s Eve.
He convinces himself the hard part will be convincing her. Works himself up over it, actually. He wants it so bad he can taste it, but he figures she’ll scoff a little. Remind him it’s impractical, or remind him that their jobs are the worst fucking careers on the planet for people who like vacations.
She shocks him.
“Book it,” she tells him that night; back propped up against her headboard in her room. No hemming, no hawing, just Olivia, handing him back his phone as she slides her glasses off; blowing out a sigh as she tilts her head back.
“It sounds…”
She closes her eyes. There’s dark circles under them that haven’t really had the chance to lighten at all. They are one week into December and he knows she’s already worn thin. Her squad, her workload, her kid. That ache in her hip that doesn’t let it up when the temperature drops below thirty.
Eyes still closed, she finishes.
“It sounds amazing.”
So, he opens the app to book it.
Three nights in a cabin, and she says she’ll call Ginny in the morning for Noah and it’ll be good, he tells her. They’ll get enough groceries to stay put if they want, but the town is close by if they want to get dressed and go out and she nods, the whole time. He watches some sort of dreamy look cross her face as she pictures it; one that he’s literally never seen Olivia Benson make in his life, and he’d do anything for that, it seems.
“It’ll be nice, El,” she tells him; voice drowsy.
He books it right there, sitting in her bed.
Then he moves himself close, rolling a little. He plants a knee between her legs, soft and easy and slides himself down. He looks up as she startles. He slides a hand up past the hem of her shirt, palm at her waistband, fingertips smoothing over the curve of her hip. His thumb dips into her bellybutton as they both watch. He feels her breath hitch when he does it again.
“This ok?”
She nods, quietly, and shuts her eyes again.
Elliot moves down on her slowly, reaching for her hand. He curls his fingers through hers, pulling them both over so they rest on the lowest part of her stomach. He kisses a slow path down her navel; mouths at the apex of her thighs. He presses his lips into the heated, velvet skin on the inside of her legs. He can feel each shuddery breath she takes, under both their hands.
“Can’t wait to take you away, Olivia.”
He murmurs it, right before he lowers his mouth to her core.
He goes down on her for a long time, working her past the roadblocks in her mind and her body. He uses his tongue and his fingers to coax a shuddery, quiet orgasm out of her. After, she rests her head on his chest, tucking in close. He thinks she’s asleep, and he lets his own eyes close, when he hears it. Olivia’s voice, drowsy, as she tells him.
“Can’t wait to get away.”
He spends the next two weeks waiting for her to make that face again.
**
It falls apart in a wholly predictable fashion.
It’s his job, this time.
During that week between Christmas and those three days he’s been literally daydreaming about - actually sitting at his desk and picturing her and an abandoned hot tub, the black tankini she’d bought soaking the wooden deck as she drags him inside - it happens.
He catches a lead on a case.
He has to cancel plans with Olivia once on the 26th, and again on the 28th and they are getting dangerously fucking close, he knows, to the day they need to leave.
“It’s - Elliot, it is what it is,” she tells him over the phone on the morning of the 30th.
He’d called her to give her a heads up. They’re closing in, they’re almost there, he keeps saying. The truth is that he’s sitting in the front seat of his truck alone for the third hour in a row, watching an empty storefront and twiddling his fucking thumbs trying to get this done. He’s got the heated seats turned on, because it’s freezing outside. He’s cold and he’s tired and he’s frustrated, and he’s not fooling her at all. He keeps analyzing her tone, trying to make sure he isn’t missing something in there.
Some hint of disappointment that she’ll let slip out.
“You have to finish it,” she tells him.
Logically, he knows she’s right.
Illogically, the weight of being a self fulfilling prophecy for Olivia, instead of the guy that has her making that face is driving him crazy.
“Yeah, yeah, I - ”
In front of his windshield, somebody moves, finally. A light turns on and the glass of a door shifts. He sits straight up in his seat.
“I gotta go, I’ll call you later.”
Then, before he hangs up, he reminds her.
“Love you.”
**
Nothing goes to plan, he knows.
The plan was: pack up Noah on the morning of the 31st. Drive to Woodstock. Say goodbye, haul ass to Saugerties. Punch the last four digits of his cell phone number into the automated lock and then immediately fucking change it, then.
Cabin.
Except: his job, and the case, and the thing where organized crime in New York City is all fucking interconnected, and he doesn’t come back to the surface for almost thirty-six hours. By the end of it, he is exhausted, and late; and overly apologetic enough to her. Olivia, who’d spent the day of her New Year’s Eve driving her kid to Woodstock, then driving back to the city to wait for him.
“I would have just - fuck, Liv.”
He’d told her a few hours ago, arm braced on a freezing cold wall inside OCCB. It started to snow sometime - he has no idea when - and the walls must have zero real insulation minus cinder block. It’s fucking freezing. He wonders if he can make his fingers go numb if he presses them in.
“I would have - I don’t know.”
He has no idea what to say. I would have left mid case is a lie and they both know it. She wouldn't have either. “I’m sorry,” he manages, relieved she can’t see the way his face pinches.
On the other end of the line, Olivia clears her throat. She starts to say something, then stops herself.
“You don’t have to apologize for this, Elliot.”
It’s his turn to start a sentence he won’t finish. Through an exhale, he starts, and he stops, then he starts again.
“I just - god damn it, Liv.”
It comes out too harsh, he knows, and he immediately dials it all the way back. It’s not like she doesn’t know, but it seems like a character flaw to be flirting with actual anger about missing midnight in a hot tub instead of real, actual reasons to get upset.
“Elliot.”
Her voice is direct, even. Steady, as she goes on.
“It is what it is. We can leave tomorrow. When you’re done, come here. I’ll be - ”
She laughs then, that low, raspy chuckle that makes him feel like he has a bubble in his chest that’s about to burst. If it pops, he’s not sure what will happen. All he’d wanted this whole time was to make her feel the way she’s making him feel right now.
“I’ll be asleep, but you can wake me up.”
Probably, he thinks, the bubble would just grow back. Over and over and over. He’d tried to pop it a million times in their past.
It’s 11:56 when he hits her door. He turns his key in the lock, and he tries to be quiet. He toes his boots off quickly and leaves them haphazardly in the middle of the floor and he shrugs off his jacket as he moves down the hall. He’s not going to wake her up, he tells himself, but he wants to be there with her, at least.
In the same room when the New Year starts.
He’s through the frame of her door, the hallway dark and the only light the small one she keeps on in the bathroom, when he hears her move. Olivia’s voice is groggy, husky and sleep filled when she asks.
“Elliot?”
She’s there, he can see. Hair a wild halo around her head, eyes blinking back at him in the dark. Real and solid and waiting for him in her bed. She’s not a delusion; not a hallucination his mind conjured up, trying to find a way to assuage the heavy weight on his shoulders.
She’s real, and she’s waiting for him.
“Yeah, hey - it’s me. I’m here.”
It’s just Olivia - and it’s him, in this room, together - and it’s a year full of baby steps and big leaps, solid side steps over huge black patches of ice, and stumbles on cracks in the sidewalks - and it’s 11:58 when he looks down at his watch.
Not quite midnight
Fuck it, he thinks.
Then he takes four long strides over to the edge of her bed. He’s gentle, when he cups her chin with his hand. She moves with him instinctually, drawing herself up to her knees even as he ducks down and it was him, this time.
Elliot kisses her first to close out the year.
He dips his head low; presses his mouth to hers, and it’s not anything he expects. It’s not perfunctory; not their now usual soft brush of lips as they say goodnight or hello. It’s intense, and slow. Drawn out; his nose bumping hers as he tilts into her, opening his mouth; tongue sliding out to find hers. It’s heated. It’s loving. It is a perfect kiss for 11:58. It sends a jolt right through him, straight to his core - the way she cups his face back, holds him there, sucks his bottom lip through hers - and when he pulls away, he sees her grin at the way his body wants to keep going, swaying forward with a knee on her bed.
“Happy New Year,” he tells her; right before she pulls him all the way down.
**
They drive to Saugerties in the morning, and he wastes no time. They drag their bags and their food in, and they forget about them in no time. He thinks the bags are still in a pile by the door; the cooler and the groceries on the kitchen counter.
He’d made her come once, already. She’d had on these pants - stretchy, at the waist, and tight on her ass - and he’d watched her take a plastic cellophane bag full of gourmet pasta noodles out of a sack and he’d been gone.
He’d dropped his own bag right there, and he’d come up behind her, arm around her waist and heavy, hot kisses pressed into the nape of her neck. He’d made her squirm a little - hand on her breast, teeth nipping her shoulder - and rock back into him and when he had her worked up enough, he’d slid his fingers under her waistband, and braced her with his knee. She’d come fast, his two thick fingers plunging in and out of her cunt, his thumb slippery and erratic on her clit, and then he’d held her through the wave of it; a grin pressed into her shoulder as he told her, his voice a rumble in his chest he knew she could feel.
“You feel so good, Liv. Just always - so good.”
It was perfect.
She was perfect.
And - it’s perfect, he knows, this cabin. It’s exactly what he’d pictured. Wide open and filled with light; the snow outside making everything bright
Beneath him now, Olivia is open. Her thighs around his waist, her lips falling open as he grips his cock and slides into her slowly - it’s perfect.
She’s perfect.
He tells her that as he sheaths himself fully.
“So perfect, baby, I just - ”
Her heels dig into the back of his calves; urging him in as deep as she can. She rocks back up and into him, one slow, hungry roll of her hips as she tilts her head back into the pillow to look up at him.
Elliot dips his head low, kissing her once before he pushes back up and tells her.
“I love you.”
They still for a second, just like that. It’s perfect, this moment. It’s perfect, now, and it’s perfect when she smiles up at him; soft and warm and tells him:
“I love you, too.”
It’s perfect when she rocks her hips, then, and grins even wider. Hair messy and everywhere, an almost flush to the golden hue of her skin - and that look on her face that makes him feel like they’d done better than okay this last year.
“I love you, El, but - ”
She arches into him then, and he groans at the slick heated pull of her cunt. She digs her fingers into his arm with one hand; into the back of his ass with the other and tells him.
“But I need you to move.”
And who is he, really, to not give her what she needs.
It doesn’t take long, when he starts moving. Last night had taken the edge off, but before that it was five days of waiting and at least four cold showers; and who knows how many goddamn thoughts meant to distract him - thoughts about anything but this - Olivia groaning underneath him as he thrusts over and over.
Olivia’s heel on his calf as he builds up a rhythm, and her cries of his name; loud and echoing through the space of the cabin as he slams into her again and again.
“Elliot - fuck, Elliot - ”
He thinks about all the years he hadn’t let himself think about this.
He hadn’t let himself think about the bounce of her tits as he pulls back just enough; and how goddamn perfect they are as he deepens his thrusts. He watches, awestruck but still moving as he pounds into her, and they jiggle. Her belly ripples as he moves, and he hadn’t let himself think about how it looks, when his own beads of sweat fall, and mix into the ones on her skin.
“You - Christ, Olivia.”
He hadn’t let himself think about the way her thigh feels when he grips it, pulling back so he can snake his hand in between them. He finds her clit with his fingers and presses down, small messy strokes that have her groaning again; hips pressing up as she chases his touch and his cock and tells him she’s close.
He hadn’t let himself think about how perfect this moment is - her, and the half sob; half groan that comes from her lips as she slams her head back and comes; perfect and gorgeous and everything underneath him. The wet heat of her cunt contracts all around him and he’s right there, right at the edge but he watches, never stopping until she’s all the way through.
He’s right behind her then; the pressure at the base of his spine a tight knot, and he thrusts into her deep, spilling himself as deep as he can with a groan.
After, he stays inside of her as long as he can, bracing most of his body above her. He lowers his head close to hers; cheeks pressing together as he nods and agrees.
“Knew this place would be good.”
He brushes his lips once on her cheek, and grins.
“Just - god.”
They lay for a while, after they clean themselves off. It’s barely eleven AM. They kiss a little, and talk about lunch. There’s bagged salads in the bags they still need to unpack. There’s a whole forty eight hours ahead of them just like this. Both of them are close to sleep when she curls up next to him; her head on his shoulder, a thigh draped over his leg. He trails a lazy pattern into the skin of her ribcage, letting it dance at the side of her breast.
They haven’t even looked at the hot tub.
He knows he wants to do this every year until they can’t anymore.
As he starts to drift off, he hears her. Her voice is raspy, a post sex husk that he recognizes now. A little contemplative, as she drags her head against his chest.
“Quite a year.”
It has been.