Chapter Text
July 2006
Her air conditioner is in its death throes, coughing and rattling like a person on the brink of crossing over. It makes a sputtering click, and she expects soon nothing will follow. The nothing is the worst part: the eerie silence. The threat of what is to come. In this case, it will be a different kind of mourning because it isn’t a person dying, it’s a fucking air conditioner. But, it is mid-July, it’s hot as Hades outside, and this really, really couldn’t come at a worse time.
Olivia took three boxes of case files home in the hopes that a change of scenery, and zero interruptions, would give her the concentration she needs to tease out whatever piece of the puzzle they’d missed so far.
Cragen was fine with it after the precinct experienced its second brownout and the squad room was plunged into chaos. Everyone was hot, overworked, and cranky.
“Get out of here for the next forty-eight hours. Take the files,” he’d said to her. “If we need you to come back, I’ll call.”
At first, as her window unit begins to protest, she thinks it’s just another power outage brought on by the high energy demands of the city.
The air conditioner coughs again, and hisses this time too, and sweat begins collecting under her arms and along the crack of her ass in anticipation.
“Oh, fuck no,” she whines, marching over to it with her hands raised in a placating gesture. “Please, please”
She hears the distinct buzz of her phone vibrating nearby and spins to answer it, still keeping one eye locked on the clunky piece of equipment perched in her window.
“Benson,” she says without even looking.
She knows it’s him.
“Hey” there’s a yell in the background and a crashing sound. “Dickie! Cut it out! Hi, Liv.”
Elliot’s voice bears the very recognizable peak of someone who’s spent too much time with his kids. She’s certain he’s totally burnt out, but by her calculation, he has at least another two days with them at Bernie’s beach house.
“Hi, Liv,” he says again.
She pictures him in floral swim shorts and a baseball cap; he's probably shirtless. Maybe he has streaks of sunscreen in a zebra pattern across his back from where he let one of the younger kids “help” him apply it.
It must be nice, she thinks, to have a place to escape to.
“Hey,” she replies, walking back to the air conditioner as it starts and stops again. “Fuck.”
“Dickie! What did I just say?” Elliot yells into the phone, and she has to hold it away from her ear. “Sorry,” he sighs, exasperated. “‘Fuck’ what?”
Olivia bangs her fist on top of the rattling plastic and metal box. “Air conditioner isn’t working,” she groans. “Stupid piece of—”
“Hitting it won’t help,” comes his astute reply.
“No shit.”
“What’s it doing?” he asks.
Olivia waves a hand in the air, as if he can see her. “How the hell should I know?” She flicks it off and back on. “It’s on its death bed, and it’s five hundred degrees in here.”
There’s a clattering sound in the background like he's tossing dishes into the sink. “You gonna head back to the one-six?”
“I don’t know,” she admits.
She thinks about Fin sitting at his desk in a tank top, looking at evidence by flashlight, dripping sweat and muttering under his breath. She imagines Munch spewing off conspiracy theories about the rolling brownouts and how they’re a part of some bigger government scheme to create dependence and normalize restrictions on usage.
“Keep the people dumb and helpless,” he said last week.
“No,” she finally admits. “Not going back for the next couple days.”
“Is the city still having brownouts?” Elliot asks. “I mean, your broken A/C won’t matter if all the power to the Upper West Side fails.”
“Thanks a lot,” she hisses. “That’s incredibly helpful. Are you an electrical engineer now?”
“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I forgot the heat makes you mean.”
Just as she’s about to start yelling at him, the box makes a clicking noise followed by a hollow clunk.
Click, clunk, click, clunk.
And then, it moans and fades to silence.
“No!” she gasps. “Nooooo!”
Elliot grunts into the phone, almost apologetically, but doesn’t say anything.
“You fucking piece of shit!” she yells, hammering her balled-up fist on it. “Ow—”
Pain shoots up through her knuckles and into her wrist.
Elliot continues to remain silent as she bemoans her situation, until he finally offers: “Want me to drive in and take a look at it?”
She freezes, hand raised above the machine, about to hit it once more.
“What about the kids?” she asks.
“Kathy is picking them up early.” He sounds annoyed about it. “She wasn’t supposed to get them until Sunday night,” he continues. “But something about a softball tryout and dance recital… and I don’t know anymore, so I just agree to whatever she says.”
That sounds a little more than just annoyed, she thinks.
“Sorry,” Olivia mumbles. And she is. She feels bad for him, but he chose the job — and the lifestyle that goes with it. She can’t say that she would make a different choice, and maybe that's why she’s still single.
“So?” he asks.
“What?”
“Jesus, Liv,” he sighs. “Sometimes you’re as bad as the kids.”
He’s lucky he’s not standing in front of her when he says that. Her hand might still be ringing from too many collisions with the window unit, but she would be tempted to slug him with it, throbbing knuckles or not.
“Fuck off, Elliot.”
“So you don’t want me to come look at it?”
She scowls and flicks the machine on again. Her ears are met with nothing but a honk from a yellow cab outside her building.
“No,” she mumbles. “It’s no use. When I moved in, the super told me it would probably croak soon — that was three years ago.”
“Alright,” he says matter-of-factly. “Why don’t you just bring the files here, then?”
Her stomach swoops and crashes. Just the mere suggestion of being alone with Elliot at a beach house makes her cheeks flush crimson. Thank God there’s no one here to see her.
“That’s probably not a great idea,” she replies.
“Huh? Why?”
Olivia rolls her eyes. “Because…”
“Because?”
She swallows. “Isn’t it… kind of… weird?”
“Christ, Benson.”
“Dad!” comes one of the girls’ rebukes on the other end of the line.
“Sorry!” he calls out. “Olivia, what are you talking about? Are you telling me power outages and a broken A/C is a better work environment?”
She thinks he’s intentionally missing the point, but decides to let it slide.
“I don’t know,” she glances at the brown boxes overflowing with folders and loose paperwork. “I brought these stupid boxes all the way uptown, not sure I’m ready to load them back—”
“Okay, okay,” he exhales noisily. “It was just an idea. No skin off my teeth if you want to suffer at home instead of enjoying the ocean breeze and a greasy pile of fried calamari.”
Her resolve cracks. “Is the marinara good?”
“The best.”
“Do they serve beer?”
“Of course,” Elliot chuckles. “But my mom also has a stocked mini fridge in the sunroom that contains exclusively that.”
Shit.
She knows she shouldn’t. When she said ‘weird’ what she really meant was ‘inappropriate.’ They might be partners, but he’s still a man separated from his wife — a man who she fantasizes about regularly. And that house is still a beach house — which means swimming; which means bathing suits and wet skin and
“Okay, you win,” she heads toward her bedroom where she has a weekend duffle she bought last year and still hasn’t taken the tags off of. “I’ll be there before dark.”
<< >>
Elliot has three thoughts when he hangs up with Olivia.
The first: that being alone with her, in a beach house, is probably a bad idea.
The second: this will be the first time they’ve been alone since Kathy left nine months ago. Sure, they spend significant time together in the sedan. But there is something inherently safe about that smelly old shoebox. It contains them, contains the possibility. Only so much can happen when you're squeezed together like sardines, sweating through your clothes, coffee cups and pastry wrappers littering the floor.
Olivia’s excuses to avoid him have grown more creative as time goes on, and he’s surprised she’s been able to carry on without Cragen noticing. If he stays late to do paperwork, she has to go grocery shopping. If he wants to go out for a drink, she has to pick up dry cleaning.
She's also been volunteering to partner with Munch more and more. Apparently, the latest 9/11 conspiracy theory is preferable to being alone with him. But she still gets her work done, somehow, so he can't question it.
And the third thought?
Olivia in nothing but a swimsuit.
Easily the most dangerous thought of the three.
He can still remember when she took a trip to the Caribbean a few years back. She returned with glowing bronze skin and natural blonde highlights that caught the light in the squad room when she turned her head just right. She'd been rather tight-lipped about the trip, which meant she had gone with a man she hadn't wanted to tell him about.
Her first day back, she took her seat across from him, a bikini line peeking out from beneath her blouse. It had been a string bikini; the lighter strap lines wrapped around her neck, descending beneath her camisole where his eyes were forbidden from venturing. He'd gulped and looked away, lest he embarrass himself and pop a boner in the middle of the squad room on a random Thursday in January.
The doorbell rings and he glances down at his watch. It'd been four hours since he spoke with Liv. Kathy was due to pick up the kids over an hour ago.
“Coming!” he calls out, traipsing towards the door and steeling himself for an inevitable confrontation with Kathy. It seems like all of their interactions are a confrontation these days.
He throws open the door, and instead of blonde hair and blue eyes, he's greeted by bangs, impossibly long legs, and a scowl that could send any grown man running.
“Liv?” he frowns. “You’re here already?”
“You're kidding me, right?” She’s flustered and annoyed, the corners of her bangs sticking to her forehead in the heat. “Are you trying to piss me off? It took four hours with traffic—” she shoulder-checks him on her way inside the door, still rambling about slow drivers in the fast lane and the rental car losing radio stations when she took the exit off of the highway.
He glances down at his watch again nervously as she drops her bag unceremoniously by the steps. How did she beat Kathy here? This is the last thing he needs right now.
“Olivia!’ Dickie and Lizzie come running and barrel into her, wrapping their arms around her waist.
She smiles and sways on her feet, the annoyance in her expression temporarily melting away as it always does with his kids. “Hey guys. What are you still doing here? I thought your Mom was coming to pick you up?”
“Mom’s running late. Traffic,” Kathleen announces as she enters the foyer with Maureen. “I got off the phone with her like a half hour ago.”
As if on cue, the doorbell rings again and Elliot stifles a groan.
Olivia shoots him a look sharp enough to cut glass. “So you thought inviting me over right at the time that your wife—”
“Ex-wife. Soon,” he clarifies, when she opens her mouth to argue. “And you’re my partner. It's not like…” he trails off as the kids throw open the front door.
Kathy’s already got a hand on the screen and steps inside. “Hey!” Kathy beams, kissing each kid on the head in turn. “Go start putting your stuff in the car, we can stop for ice cream at Molly's!”
Lizzie and Dickie start whooping and hollering as Kathleen and Maureen follow them out.
Kathy runs a hand across her sweaty brow, car keys between her fingers. “Elliot, whose car is—” Her eyes land on Olivia's face, and narrow as they shift to the bag on the floor.
“Olivia’s air conditioning broke,” Elliot offers lightly, avoiding Kathy's gaze. “The City is having rolling brownouts. She was just stepping out to the car to grab the case files we are working on.”
He pivots to Olivia who is standing there, eyes wide, watching Kathy like a rabbit caught in a snare.
Elliot clears his throat loudly, and it pulls Olivia out of her daze.
“Be right back,” she croaks, nearly sprinting, the screen door slamming behind her.
“Really?” Kathy draws back, crossing her arms, a sardonic smile on her lips. “Couldn't wait until I picked up the kids?”
“I didn’t mean for you to get here at the same time, Kath,” he whines. “Can we not”
“You know, I would have a lot more respect for you if you were just honest with me.”
“Honest about what?”
Kathy rolls her eyes and shakes her head, blonde ponytail whipping back and forth. “What do you think, Elliot?”
He hates this circuitous line of questioning, and decides to nip it right in the bud.
“I'm not sleeping with her!” he exclaims, right at the moment Olivia walks back inside, boxes stacked to her chin. She freezes, the screen door smacking her noisily in the ass as it swings shut.
They all stare silently at each other. Kathy can't seem to decide which one of them she wants to glower at, and Olivia looks like she wants to eat her gun.
“It’s not as good as mint!” Dickie shouts back at his sisters as he shoves the screen open again: it hits the front door with a loud crack. The noise makes Elliot’s eye twitch.
“You're seriously going to waste your one trip a year to Molly's getting mint chocolate chip ice cream?” Kathleen sticks her tongue out in disgust. “I’m disowning you.”
“You always get nasty flavors like pistachio,” Lizzie cuts in, defending her brother.
“Alright, alright,” Kathy claps her hands together. “Everyone say good-bye to your Dad so we can get back on the road.”
“Bye, Dad!”
“Bye!”
“Love you!”
“Mom, can I get mint chocolate chip?”
They all line up single file to hug and kiss him before making their way back outside. The clamor fades to a dull roar as Elliot shuts the front door behind them, the latch echoing in the foyer.
“That went well,” Olivia grumbles, plopping the boxes down on the steps beside her bag.
“Olivia, come on.”
But she doesn’t heed his plea.
“So, what” she waves her hand at the door, “she thinks you’ve been fucking me this whole time?”
Elliot winces. “No.”
“So just recently, then.”
“No! I don’t think that’s — she’s just… angry.”
“Clearly,” Olivia mumbles. She starts chewing on her lip. “Why didn’t you tell me to come later?”
“I didn’t know the traffic would be that bad!” he says defensively. “She was supposed to get here before…” he pauses, taking a deep breath. “Look, we haven’t been separated for very long. Things are going to be a little awkward for a while.”
“We could have made it more awkward though,” Olivia continues, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Next time you could—”
“There won't be a next time,” he says through gritted teeth.
She squints at him, and they stare each other down for a moment. She caves first and stalks past him towards the kitchen. “So, where is that fried calamari I was promised?”
“Well, I have to order it and pick it up.”
She disappears around the corner and he follows, talking, as he tries to analyze her mood. “I thought we’d unpack the files and work for a bit, but since you were in the car all that time I’m guessing food first would be preferable?”
“Yeah,” she replies. Somehow she already made it through the kitchen and is in the living room. “Food first.”
“Okay, I’ll call in the order.” He begins shuffling through the paper tri-fold menus in the top drawer by the fridge. “Do you want an Italian chop salad, too?”
Olivia re-enters from the doorway closest to him, leaning a shoulder against the frame as he dials. “Sure. Where am I sleeping by the way?”
Sleeping? He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
They’ve slept next to each other in the cribs before, or dozed on and off together in the front seat of a squad car, but they’ve never slept in a proper home together. The thought of it is both depressing and exhilarating.
He blinks back at her as the phone rings on the other end. “Two doors down on your left,” he finally says. “Bernie calls it The Blue Room. You’ll see why.”
“Where is she anyway?” Liv asks.
“My older brother’s for a week.”
A male voice answers right as Olivia turns, her footsteps echoing down the hallway.
“Hi — hello,” Elliot stammers and glances back down at the menu to remember who he’s talking to. “Yeah, can I place a takeout order?”
After hanging up, he walks down the hallway towards the Blue Room. The door is cracked, and he can see a sliver of light and a shadow moving across the wall.
“Liv?”
“Yeah.” Her face fills the space at an odd angle — head bent sideways as one bare shoulder slips into view — and it occurs to him that she’s not fully dressed.
“Oh, sorry,” he grumbles, stepping back. “Just, uh, wanted to tell you I’m gonna go pick up the food.”
“Okay,” she says nonchalantly.
Flustered, he keeps rambling. “Yeah, I need to get the calamari back here before it gets soggy — I want to be there waiting when they finish it.”
“Okay.”
He nods and glances back up to see she’s gone.
“Help yourself to whatever you want,” he says while retreating further. “I’ll move the boxes to the table.”
“Thanks.”
Her voice sounds quieter, muffled almost, and he wonders exactly what she’s doing. Is she changing all her clothes? And if so, why?
Elliot does his best to not think about what she might or might not be doing as he drives the three minutes down the road to Ship Bottom and picks up his brown bag of takeout. The usually appealing smell of grease and seafood does nothing for him tonight as his stomach churns end over-end-like a washing machine. When he steps back inside the house he realizes he forgot all about the case files.
Olivia is wearing a threadbare t-shirt big enough to hide almost every curve underneath it. He can’t see her legs because they’re hidden by the table, and it's for the best. She's probably trying to be modest by wearing the t-shirt. But what she doesn't know is that he actually finds oversized tees attractive — especially on her. Truthfully, he finds everything attractive on her, but there’s something relaxed and domestic about a thin, cotton t-shirt, with or without branding on it. This one has something written on the front, but he isn’t paying attention to that.
The fabric is draped across her chest, accentuating the roundness of her breasts just enough to make a heaviness settle in the pit of his gut.
He swallows hard and looks away at the table instead.
She has the boxes sitting on the floor, and files spread out before her, with an amber beer bottle at her elbow.
“Sorry,” he sets down the bag. “I forgot to move the boxes.”
“No problem,” she says, reaching for the food. “You paid for dinner and are giving me a cool place to sleep, so I figure we’re just about even.”
He smiles and retrieves two plates from the cabinet, watching patiently as she dumps a pile of fried squid onto her plate and tips her face into the bag.
“There’s only one container of marinara,” she quips.
He knows that tone. It isn’t accusatory, but it isn’t pleased either.
“It’s fine, you can have it,” he tells her.
“We can share it,” she offers.
He waves a hand. “Nah, it’s okay. You have it.”
“What, are you scared of my germs, Stabler?”
“No… Benson, I’m not.” He squints back at her and catches the twitch at the corners of her mouth. He wonders if her lips are as soft as he imagines them to be. “I like mine with lemon, anyway,” he shrugs and reaches for the salad. “Gonna start with The Chop.”
They’re both quiet for a few minutes. He spears pieces of iceberg, green pepper, and salami into his mouth, as she dips the fried rings into red sauce. Periodically she licks the pads of her fingers, and if it were anyone else he’d point out the napkin folded next to her, but he rather enjoys watching her suck them clean.
The way her lips pucker and circle around each digit also remind him of other more lascivious acts, and he’d be damned if he is going to discourage that. It isn’t like he’ll ever get to experience that for himself anyway, so he might as well enjoy what he can get.
“Good?” he finally asks, when she sighs and sticks her fork into the salad container.
“Mhm,” she nods, chewing thoughtfully. “But who made iceberg popular?”
“What do you mean?” he queries, slightly offended. “What’s wrong with iceberg?”
She frowns and jabs her fork into a chunk of something he suspects is provolone. “It’s just water,” she swallows and reaches across the table again. “With a little bit of crunch.”
Elliot folds his arms across his chest and leans back, enjoying the mindless banter.
“Well, yeah,” he replies. “Iceberg is just a vessel for the toppings and the dressing. Haven’t you ever had a wedge salad?”
“Oh my God,” she laughs. “Don’t even get me started on the wedge. It is not a salad.”
“It’s literally called a wedge salad, Liv.”
“Nope.” She shakes her head adamantly. “Not a salad. The blue cheese people just invented it as a way to sell dressing.”
“I didn’t know I invited Munch to dinner.”
She rolls her lips and bites on the bottom one, setting down the fork a little too forcefully. Elliot stares back at her innocently, he doesn’t really give a fuck about salads or dressing, he just enjoys watching her get worked up.
“How about we get back to the case?” he asks. “Maybe we can spend a couple hours sifting through and then…”
“Then what?”
He hesitates, pretending not to notice the way she’s staring at him; her gaze is heavy — intense.
“Shit, I don’t know. Go for a swim?” he mutters. “We are at the beach, after all.”
As soon as he says it, the image of Olivia in a bathing suit, water droplets resting on the tops of her breasts, invades his mind again and he licks his lips.
Olivia, thankfully, bends down to flip the top off one of the boxes and misses him gulping and shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
She rifles through it before setting a heavy stack of paper clipped packets in front of them. “Only if we get some kind of break, first.” She taps the stack with one finger. “A swim needs to be a reward for moving this thing forward.”
Damn, he thinks. She drives a hard bargain.
He cracks his knuckles loudly and catches her wince. She hates when he does that, but he can’t seem to stop. It’s instinctual — a habit — and he can’t shake it now. Kind of like his feelings for her. Both are ingrained in his very being: he cracks his knuckles before beginning a task, and he loves his partner.
Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Or in other words: some things never change.
“Alright,” he says. “Deal.”
There's a look of smug satisfaction on her face, which tends to appear when she wins an argument or gets her way with him.
She could have her way with him any time she wanted to, really.
He wouldn't be able to say no.
<< >>
The sun sets while they're pouring over the contents of the second box, and it's pitch black when they move on to the third. She’d found a key piece of information while rifling through the second box — a driver's license for one of their suspects with a fake last name and address. It was exactly the type of break they were looking for.
But it was seven pm when she stumbled upon that.
At seven pm, the sun was just dipping over the horizon; the sky was alight with golden flecks of light, baby pink and lavender streaks trailing across the blue sky.
It was gorgeous. And incredibly romantic.
She cannot go for a swim on the beach with a shirtless Elliot Stabler beneath a romantic sunset. She cannot look at his wet body — and the soft belly he’s been complaining about recently, but she secretly likes — all aglow in the setting of the sun.
So, she held onto the license as they finished reviewing the contents of the second box, and moved onto the third.
Thankfully, the sunset came with a dramatic drop in temperature. Elliot opened the sliding glass door onto the deck around eight, the cool salty air drifting into the living room. The breeze and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore should have been soothing; it certainly brought relief from the wet, suffocating heat.
But she's as irritable as ever, tense — a pressure valve that desperately needs to release some steam. If she were home, she might go for a run, maybe throw a few punches at the bag in the one-six, or hole up in her apartment with her magic wand until she was limp, boneless, and free of the tight coil of tension inside her chest.
But she's not at home and she's not at the one-six; she is alone with her partner.
And his naked ring finger.
She glances down at her watch. 8:34pm. It’s dark now, the beach nearly invisible but for a small strip of sand illuminated by the moon. Elliot’s been yawning for the last ten minutes, his eyelids heavy. Maybe he will just give up the whole thing and suggest that they go to bed. Regardless, she can’t stall any longer.
“I've got something,” she finally says, holding up the driver's license.
He blinks, scooting forwards in his chair. “Is that—”
“Yep,” she nods as he snatches it out of her hand to stare more closely at it.
He grins, “Son of a bitch.” His blue eyes twinkle as he meets her gaze.
She looks away, suddenly flustered, and clears her throat. “I guess we've finally earned that break then, huh?” she adds nervously.
He uses the chair’s armrests to push himself up. “I'm going to get changed, I've been looking forward to that swim—”
“It's a little late now, don't you think?” she cuts in, placing the lid back over the third box. Her voice wobbles a bit as she speaks, and she clears her throat again.
“It’s never too late for a swim, Benson,” he jokes, the grin still plastered on his face. “What, too chicken?”
“Chicken?” she looks up at him, frowning. That irritation in her chest surges again, crashing loudly against her ears and drowning out the ocean. He’s goading her on, and she knows it, but he’s right. His bare ring finger makes her feel exposed. It's her barrier of protection against her own feelings — and now it's gone.
They can continue to hide behind their partnership, dance around one another and pretend they don’t want to fuck each other’s brains out, but there is nothing stopping them now. Not really.
She rolls her eyes at him, playing it off, busying herself with stacking the boxes so he can’t see her face. “Well I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of freezing my ass off—”
“Come on,” he wanders around to the other side of the table right at the moment that she straightens back up. They’re toe-to-toe, standing so close now that she gets a whiff of his sandalwood cologne every time she breathes in through her nose. She squints up at him, her heart racing inside her chest at their proximity.
His eyes are soft, playful, and they wander down to her lips for a few seconds too long. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he murmurs, his breath tickling her cheek, and oh- she can think of a few things.
“Fine,” she whips her hair over her shoulder and marches towards the deck, and he follows her outside.
“I'm going in with my clothes on,” she announces. Only then does she remember she's in a white t-shirt, which will cling to every curve of her body once she’s wet, and fuck maybe this isn't any better than the swimsuit after all.
Thank God it's dark.
She shivers briefly as the cool night air hits her face.
“You ever been skinny dipping, Benson?” he asks, his voice low against her ear as he comes up behind her at the railing. She whips around, but he's still grinning, still teasing. She doesn't understand this jovial mood of his, she's got a thick layer of sweat underneath her breasts and she just wants to punch something or—
“Jesus, would you lighten up?” he says, bumping her shoulder.
She scowls at him. “Easy for you to say when—”
“You know, maybe it is better to go for a swim in our clothes. The jellyfish love to hang around the dock at night.”
“Jellyfish?” she draws back, alarmed. “Aren't we a little too close to the shore for jellyfish?”
“They come in at high tide,” he gestures towards the water. “But don't worry, they don't sting people who are in a pissy mood.”
Olivia swats at him and he ducks, taking off down the steps towards the water like a kid. The corners of her mouth twitch as she fights valiantly to stay annoyed with him.
She has to admit, the beach at night is beautiful, and unfortunately for her, it isn’t much less romantic than it was at sunset. She kicks off her shoes on the bottom step.
What the fuck is she doing?
Working, she tells herself.
They’re working, and they deserve this, after finding the counterfeit driver’s license. This is a good thing.
And she deserves to relax, after the day she's had. It's no wonder she's in a terrible mood.
Elliot sheds his t-shirt and tosses it onto the sand.
“Hey!” She cups her hands around her mouth. “I thought we were swimming with our clothes on!”
Elliot acknowledges that he heard her with a dismissive wave of his hand, but he’s already knee-deep in the surf. He’s wearing dark shorts, and she can't tell if they’re swim shorts or not. It’s just another reminder that men have it so easy. She, on the other hand, is wearing denim cut-offs, which will no doubt chafe the shit out of her thighs.
The dry sand is still warm from the sun as she walks toward the ocean. As she reaches the edge of the water, she lingers with her toes in the wet sand, letting the foam from the waves lap at her feet while she watches him. He’s comfortable here, as he should be. She can make out his chiseled back and shoulders above the water as he bobs in the waves, deliberately letting one crash over his head. He pops back up and shakes it from side to side, looking back at her with an infectious smile stretching across his face.
If they were sweating and miserable at the one-six, it would be easier to continue grumbling and stomping around, but it’s harder to do that here.
She glances down at her old Yankees t-shirt, and wonders if she should just take it off. She has a black bra underneath; to Elliot’s untrained eyes, it would probably look like a bathing suit, and it certainly wouldn't cling to her chest the way a wet t-shirt would. But she decides against it, wading out into the water until a blanket of goosebumps erupts across her skin.
“What are you doing?” Elliot calls out.
She wraps her arms around herself. “Trying to adjust!” She shivers. “The water is freezing!”
Elliot wades closer, his big arms dragging through the smaller surf to propel him toward her.
“No it’s not! It feels great, you just have to get your head under.”
“No way,” she fires back. “Too cold.”
He pushes through the water until he’s just a few feet away. “C’mon, Benson. Trust me.”
She hates how he says it. As if they aren’t talking about swimming — and maybe they're not.
But she has always trusted him, since day one, when she was still bright-eyed and eager, and he didn't yet hold the keys to her heart.
“Does Bernie own a hair dryer?” she asks, taking another few hesitant steps, until the water meets her rib cage. A small wave rolls into her, and it reaches her chest.
Her nipples shrink inside the fabric of her bra and she shivers again.
Elliot laughs. “Of course Bernie owns a hair dryer. You’ve seen how many women are in this family. As a matter of fact,” he reaches for her wrist. “I think there’s a hair dryer in every bathroom of this house.”
As his fingers close around her arm, she knows what he’s going to do before he does it, and she opens her mouth to protest. But it’s too late. Another small wave crashes in front of them and he pulls her forward, directly into it.
“Oh, you asshol—” the water smacks her in the face before she can turn her head. It doesn’t submerge her, but she’s drenched, water droplets running down her eyelids. She glares at him.
Another wave approaches, and she feels the lean muscles of his forearm reach around her waist.
She kicks her feet to keep her head from going under. “I’m not the strongest swimmer.”
“I’ve got you,” he reassures her.
She knows that he does, but she isn’t sure if she trusts herself this close to him. Her right hip keeps brushing up against his dick, his hands are dangerously close to the waistband of her shorts, and there’s an animalistic part of her that is growling at the thought of just taking his hand and shoving it down inside her underwear.
“Hold your breath,” he instructs, as if she wasn’t going to do that already.
Olivia experiences a rush of adrenaline as she sees the dark shape of a wave approaching, and she instinctively throws the rest of her weight into him just as it crashes over their heads.
For a second sound is muffled and everything is black as they float in limbo before popping back up above the surface. She drags a free hand over her face and blinks rapidly as she tries to orient herself.
Elliot is watching her closely, and of course, he’s still smiling.
“Ready for another one?” he asks.
“No.”
He turns his head. “Too bad…”
She sucks in a breath and closes her eyes. Distantly, she recognizes the cinch of his muscles as he curls an arm around her and braces for both of them. The next thing she knows, they’re under again and she’s clinging to him like a barnacle.
If this was daytime, she’d feel more confident — at least, she thinks she would. But there’s something scary about the ocean at night; it makes her feel like a little kid, at the mercy of a force much more powerful than she is.
“Okay?” he asks in her ear.
She sputters, opening her eyes again. “Yes.”
“Still cold?”
“No, actually.”
Elliot smiles in a self-satisfied way as he nods toward the ocean.
“Another wave coming,” he looks back at her, and this time she lets go of him and sinks under the surface right before it crashes.
His hands find her underwater, one grips her bicep and the other hooks under her armpit. She realizes one second too late that he’s behind her now, right as she sways back into him and her shoulders meet his chest. The hand on her side is big; his long fingers reach all the way around and brush over the soft skin of her breast.
They pop back up, butterflies swarming in her stomach, her already racing heart skips a beat.
“Sorry,” he grunts as he pulls the hand away. “You said that you aren’t a very good swimmer.”
That’s true, she thinks. She did tell him that.
“It’s fine,” she says quickly. A wave of guilt hits her, much more powerful than the ocean, when she thinks about how desperately she wishes he would grab her again. “Better to be safe — ow!”
Searing pain shoots through her leg. “Fuck!” She shouts.
“What? What’s wrong?” Elliot is looking at her with a mix of confusion and fear.
“Something stung me!”
Elliot is still holding her arm, and he motions to the shore. “There’s a lull in the waves now,” he pulls her gently as a smaller one moves them forward. “Let’s take a look at it.”
She nods and lets him lead her back to the beach. He smoothly exits the small surf and she stumbles out, clutching at her wet clothes and at his arm as the breeze meets their skin.
“Fuck!” she shouts again. The white-hot burning sensation is more pronounced now that they’re out of the water, and the pain is increasing by the second. “It really hurts.”
“Sorry,” he mutters. “I didn’t think we would actually encounter a jelly—”
He trails off as she groans and shoots him a withering glance.
“Let me help you to the house,” he offers instead, his voice gentle as he places an arm around her shoulders.
They make it about halfway, her wet t-shirt plastered to her skin, and her denim shorts scraping between her thighs, until she buckles and sinks down onto the sand.
“Jesus,” she hisses through clenched teeth. “Have you ever been stung before?”
He bends down next to her and tries to look at her leg by the faint glow of the deck light. He huffs as he squints down at her leg.
“Yeah, once, when I was a teenager.”
She whines as the skin continues to sting.
“Everyone here always used to say that—” he stops and scratches mindlessly at his arm.
“What? They used to say, what, Elliot?”
“Um, that, you know…”
He keeps scratching mindlessly at his arm and, oh God, is he blushing?! She is on the verge of throttling him, now. “What?” she practically spits. “I don’t know! What?!”
“That peeing on it helps relieve the pain.”
At first she thinks she misheard him, but when he doesn’t continue, and he glances around nervously, she knows that she didn’t.
“Oh, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.” She looks back at the house and pushes to stand. The pain instantly slices across her shin, and his arm shoots out to catch her as her legs tremble.
“I know how it sounds,” he helps her stand as she limps toward the deck of Bernie’s house. “But my friends who grew up here swear by it.”
“No way,” she barks back. “It sounds unsanitary. And—” she winces. “How would I even manage to pee on my own leg?”
She probably could, actually, but it would take some dramatic bending of her lower extremities.
“I don’t think the idea is that you pee on yourself.”
He’s quiet then, too quiet, and what he’s offering suddenly clicks.
“Oh my God! Elliot… are you…you can’t seriously be offering to pee on my—”
“No! I mean, yes! If you needed me to — I could.” He isn’t looking at her now, eyes trained on the ground.
“No. Way,” she declares forcefully, but desperation is already beginning to seep in; her leg is stinging badly. “Don’t you have a special jellyfish-sting-cream or something?!”
“I’m sure my mom has Cortisone,” he says, but he sounds skeptical.
“Right,” she exhales. “Cortisone.”
As they reach the steps to the deck, the light cascading from the glass doors lands on them, and she can sense Elliot’s eyes on her. She might be wearing clothes, but it doesn’t feel like it.
Her heart is pounding in her throat as she lets her arms drop, bending to pick up her dry shoes.
The stabbing pain hits her again and she curses under her breath, lowering herself to the bottom step where she bends to examine her leg. A large, angry, pink mark is blooming on the outside of her ankle as if she’s been scorched by a hot poker. It feels like her whole leg is on fire.
“Sorry, Liv,” he hovers over her, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides.
She groans. “It’s not your fault.”
“I mean, it kinda is.”
She scoffs. “You’re right. It is.”
“The least I can do is try to help…”
His tone is reluctant, but committed, not unlike how she imagines he would react to her request for a sperm donation so she could have a baby.
The burn is starting to spread up her leg. She likes to think she has a high pain tolerance, but holy fuck, this really hurts.
Olivia digs her fingernails into the meat of her legs, trying in vain to distract her brain from the pain. It isn’t working and she looks up at him, the plea right on the tip of her tongue. “Okay! Okay — fine! But I swear to God, Elliot, if you ever mention this to anyone we work with, I will kill you.”
Now he looks as nervous as she is, and maybe there’s a bit of regret in his eyes.
“Of course not.” He's scratching at his arm again. “We’re partners. It’ll never leave the beach.”
What happens on LBI stays on LBI, she thinks ruefully.
Elliot’s eyes sweep over her. “I guess just… stick your leg out toward the sand, and—” he laughs, but it’s strangled, and his hands are shaking. “Don’t look, maybe? I don’t know. Just close your eyes.”
“You’re going to piss on my jellyfish sting, but you don’t want me to see your dick?”
It’s more of a rhetorical statement than a question.
“I don’t really care, actually. It’s more for your sake.”
“I’m the one getting peed on!” she exclaims. “Who cares if I see your penis?!”
“Fine, fine. Okay!” He reaches under the waistband of his shorts, and it must be instinctual, because she averts her gaze, looking down at her mottled skin instead. It’s even redder now.
“Ready?” he asks, and he sounds horrified.
She nods. “Just do it.”
A few seconds pass and nothing happens.
“Sorry,” he sighs loudly. “A little nervous.”
“Look, Elliot. If you can’t do it, let’s just go to bed and maybe in the morning it’ll be better.”
Suddenly, a warm stream splashes on her ankle.
He’s doing it. He’s really pissing on her leg.
She has to bite her lip to keep from laughing, but when she looks up at his face to find his jaw locked shut and his eyes pinched closed, she can’t resist stealing a quick glimpse. She’s drawn to where his hand is cradled, like gravity itself is pulling her in.
His cock looks heavy in his palm. As she always assumed, he’s…big. Not freakish or anything, but definitely thick. Her mind sprouts legs and immediately begins to wander off, thinking about how full she would feel if he was inside of her, and there’s a growing dampness between her thighs that isn’t the result of the saltwater.
His stream slows to a trickle and she looks away quickly, gulping, as he shoves his dick beneath his swim trunks again.
“That was refreshing,” she jokes, brushing the wet hair out of her face.
All of his light-hearted teasing from before seems to have evaporated. “How does it feel?” he asks nervously, his voice so quiet she has to strain to hear him over the ocean waves behind them.
She realizes right after he asks her, that the burning on her leg has faded to a dull sting and goddammit — it actually worked.
“A little better. Actually,” she mumbles back at him. She can feel his eyes on her, and heat climbs up the back of her neck and flushes her face.
He stands there awkwardly while she stares down at the wooden slabs of the stairs. One of them needs to break this silence or she is going to go insane.
She finally risks a glance up at him, and Elliot meets her gaze. There is an intensity in his eyes and in his stance that makes her stomach drop. He shifts almost imperceptibly on his feet, and one hand tugs at the damp fabric of his shorts. His eyes glide over her, hovering for a beat where she feels her nipples trying to cut through the thin foam cups of her bra. His Adam's apple bounces in his throat, and his blue eyes are as dark as the water at their backs.
He abruptly steps around her. “I’m going to get a couple towels,” he says, bounding up the stairs ahead of her.
She shivers again, and she isn’t sure if it’s from the cold or from the way he was looking at her. She recognizes that they’re on dangerous ground, but the last fifteen minutes with him — including the jellyfish sting — have been the best of the entire day. Hell, the entire week.
As she reaches the top of the steps, he reappears, shorts dripping and creating a puddle around his feet. He has one towel draped over his shoulders, and another stretched open between his hands. He’s waiting for her to step into it, and while she could reach for it instead — to send a clear message to him that whatever closeness they shared in the water was unique just to that moment — she doesn’t.
Olivia walks forward and turns right before she reaches him, letting him wrap the two corners of the thick towel around her shoulders.
Time stretches on, somehow thin and heavy at the same time. She knows that she should take a step away, put some space in between them, but his arms feel big and secure. He’s warm, too, and as if on cue, another small chill runs through her and causes her upper body to shake.
They’ve never even hugged, but now they stand in a partial embrace, with her back against his chest — and maybe that is what makes it something neither of them is shying away from. She can’t see his face, and he can’t see hers. They can pretend, just for a few moments, that they aren’t themselves.
They are just two strangers who met for a night on the beach.
But that facade instantly shatters when she leans back into him. He must not have expected it, because he sucks in a small, surprised breath as her backside brushes against the unmistakable hardness of something that is neither bone, nor muscle.
He’s partially aroused.
Elliot recoils, embarrassed that she felt it. He is already at the glass sliding door by the time she turns around, one hand gripping it so tightly she can see his white knuckles glowing in the dim light.
“I uh — forgot to clean up the kitchen. From earlier. I’m gonna — I need to do that real quick. Bernie hates when we leave dishes out overnight, she says they attract mice and ants.” He’s rambling, and she feels bad for him. She feels bad for herself — she just wants his arms wrapped around her again.
“Not that we have either of those at the house right now.” He’s still talking and she desperately wants to interrupt and reassure him, but she doesn’t know what to say. “But I don’t want it to be my fault if we get them. I’m gonna — yeah — go do that.”
And then he’s gone. She’s left staring at the doorway, mouth slightly agape, and the lingering feeling of his erection nudging her in the ass.