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Day 1
Olivia was in a foul mood.
She had been for days. Her boobs hurt. Her morning coffee sent her running for the bathroom. She was starving all the time but then she’d smell something and get instantly nauseous. She kept flipping from freezing to sweating at a moment’s notice.
For everything Serena had done wrong in her life, getting Olivia on a birth control schedule early was one of the better things she’d done. Serena, of course, had done it out of fear of her daughter meeting the same fate and then winding up with a rapist’s baby of her own to raise. But aside from that, it also prevented Olivia from most monthly mood swings, cravings, cramping, and the other general unpleasantness that came with being a woman.
Now three months off birth control in the hopes of potentially trying to either conceive with donor sperm or magically find someone that she didn’t want to slap who’d be willing to give her a child, and she could only hope motherhood would be a hell of a rewarding job to put up with this bullshit month after month.
She was in the midst of a hot flash when she sat down at her desk that morning, dropping her bag and kicking it under the desk.
She’d woken up to stained sheets and underwear and she’d been rushing around before her shift trying to get them pre-soaked so they wouldn’t be a total loss. And the rushing caused her to sweat. And El had the Crown Vic so she was forced to take the subway, which was crowded and smelly, and caused her to sweat more.
Olivia was thinking about how much she hated the entire process of being a woman when she looked down at her desk. Right in the center was a single Hersey’s kiss. The candy had a green wrapper, likely from a bag left over from Christmas a few months ago.
She wondered if it’d accidentally fallen out of someone’s bag or lunch box. Maybe someone on the night shift who’d set something down on her desk and it just rolled out. Although, a Hershey’s kiss wasn’t like a $5 bill. Whoever dropped it probably wasn’t going to want it back.
Olivia smiled and unwrapped the candy and placed it on her tongue. She balled up the wrapper and sent it flying over Elliot’s desk and dunked right into Fin’s garbage can.
“Nice shot,” she heard from behind her and spun around to see Elliot heading back from the restroom.
“That’s all God-given talent,” she joked.
“Well, Michael Jordan,” Elliot said, leaning against the corner of her desk. “Lemme bring you up to speed on what fell in our laps this morning.”
As Olivia let the chocolate dissolve in her mouth, she listened to Elliot talk. And for as terrible as she’d felt, it also felt pretty good to be back into the normal swing of things with her partner.
Day 2
Why did day two always seem to be worse than day one?
Thank God for black pants and the fact that they didn’t have to go on any stakeouts or extended car rides today. It made taking give or take 200 trips to the bathroom more accessible than it would have been if she and Elliot had been trapped in the car for hours on end.
She’d had to sneak away from the bullpen and up to the cribs for a few minutes, at least until the smell of Thai dissipated a little. She’d been excited for Pad Thai when Fin said he’d order out, but that was 45 minutes ago. Enough time for her to feel like she’d swallowed a lead balloon. And when she opened the container and took one look at it and a whiff of the stuff, she had to take a deep breath to keep herself from actually retching right into the container.
Munch and Fin got a call right away so they had to take their food to go. She hoped she was discrete enough with Elliot that he didn’t realize what had gone on.
She’d been sitting on a bunk wondering if anyone would realize if she just laid down and moaned and groaned in pain for a while when she thought she heard footsteps climbing the stairs. Unfortunately, being a woman in the NYPD meant hiding your emotions and discomfort so nobody would see you as weak. Even if it felt like your ovary was going 10 rounds with the front wall of your pelvis to escape your body.
Quickly, Olivia made her way to her locker and spun the dial, opening it up. When she swung the door open, she saw something inside that wasn’t there when she deposited her coat and bag earlier in the morning. Lined up in a row along the top shelf were three more Hershey’s kisses. Two red and one silver this time. She knew for a fact they hadn’t been there this morning.
But nobody should have her locker combination?
Maybe the one from yesterday wasn’t a fluke after all.
Olivia’s stomach rumbled, signaling she needed something to eat, even if it wasn’t going to be the Pad Thai, so she pulled the candies out and popped the first one in her mouth. It was exactly what she needed. That and something salty. And maybe a Sprite.
“Hey, Liv, you up here?” Elliot called, pushing into the cribs.
“Yeah, here, El,” Olivia answered. “What’s up?”
When she turned around, Elliot was holding a family-size bag of Cheetos and two bottles of Sprite in his hands.
“Just checking on you,” he said. “I had a couple of bites of my food but it didn’t taste right, so I tossed it. Made me a little nauseous. Tossed yours too since we got the same. I was kinda in the mood for something junk food instead.”
“Since you threw my lunch away, Stabler, you better be sharing,” she said, eyeing the Cheetos, wondering if it would give her away if she ripped the bag out of his hands and started in on it.
“Of course,” he said. “The table on the balcony?”
“Read my mind, partner,” she said.
Day 3
Olivia woke up only mildly annoyed on the third day, so she was better off than she’d been the past two. Yesterday, she and Elliot ran down a lead that turned out to be a dead end and he dropped her off at home for the night. She’d barely stopped to take off her shoes and gun belt before taking a skin-melting shower and going straight to bed.
Slowly, Olivia wiped the sleep out of her eyes, visited the bathroom, and then went to the kitchen to make her morning coffee. When she slid her favorite mug down from the cabinet, she found a surprise.
It was full of more red, green, and silver Hershey kisses.
Now, Olivia was starting to get worried. It was one thing to find these suckers at the precinct, but an entirely different one to find them in her apartment , in her coffee mug that she’d tucked away in the cabinet.
She wasn’t a stranger to stalkers, but this was one of the weirder ones she’d encountered yet.
As she went to unwrap one, she thought maybe it wasn’t the best idea to eat stalker candy. Especially if it was laced with poison or something.
Instead, she carefully pulled a Ziplock bag from the drawer and dumped the candy inside, leaving it on the counter. You know, just in case she had to call CSU in later to search the place.
As she got ready for the day, she tried to shake the feeling that someone was watching her, like Richard White all over again.
Day 4
Elliot had court today, so it looked like Olivia was flying solo tracking down a few more witnesses for the case. He’d brought the car in from Queens early this morning and taken the subway to the courthouse so she had the Crown Vic if she needed it. But when Olivia went over to the pegboard, it looked like Elliot forgot and had taken the keys with him.
“Damn,” she muttered under her breath.
“Oh, hey, I have your keys, sorry,” Fin said, lobbing them across the room. “Old beanpole hit a curb the other day, bent the wheel on ours. It’s outta commission.”
“I didn’t hit a curb,” Munch said. “I scraped the side of a barrier.”
“Doesn’t matter what you did, you still broke the car,” Fin said, starting up another round of bickering, which Lake stepped in to referee.
Olivia shook her head all the way down to the car. She hopped in, turned the key, and changed the radio station back to her usual 70s one before pulling away from the curb.
It wasn’t until she’d gotten to the witness’s apartment that she accidentally stuck her hand in the cupholder and found five more Hershey’s kisses sitting there. Luckily it was winter, and they didn’t have a chance to melt.
Oddly enough, finding them here was a comfort. It meant either Munch or Fin had been the ones leaving them around for her this past week. Although she wasn’t totally comfortable with the fact that one of them had memorized her cycle or snuck into her apartment while she was asleep to plant candy there. But both of their hearts were usually in the right place.
She’d just have to give them a stern little talking to about scaring the crap out of her.
On the upside, at least the candy wasn’t poisoned. And she could enjoy the few from the car and have a nice Ziplock bag full to devour in front of some trashy TV show tonight.
Day 5
Elliot had court all day again today, and Olivia thought that was a good a time as any to confront her loveable yet clueless co-workers about their behavior.
Surprisingly though, it was mid-afternoon and she hadn’t come across any candy yet today. Maybe she just hadn’t found it, or maybe they’d wised up on their own. Either way, she still wanted to give them a talking to, being SVU detectives and all. Sometimes men just didn’t get how actions they thought were kind could actually come off creepy.
“Hey guys, can we talk for a minute?” Olivia asked, perching herself on the end of Elliot’s desk and facing the boys.
“Sure, Liv,” Munch said. “What’s up.”
“Um, while I think it’s really sweet that one of you has been leaving me candy all week,” she started. “And I don’t know what I did to deserve the special treatment, sneaking into my apartment and putting candy there, and breaking into my locker, that crossed a line a little bit.”
She expected them to apologize. Maybe even spin a story of how they were just trying to be nice. Instead, they stared back at her blankly.
“Is this some kind of weird government prank?” Munch asked.
“No?” Olivia said.
“Babygirl, while I do think you deserve all the candy, flowers, and jewelry, it ain’t Valentine’s Day quite yet,” Fin said. “And while I’d be honored to be your Valentine, I wouldn’t hide shit in your apartment. That’s damn creepy.”
“You mean neither one of you has been hiding Hershey’s kisses in my desk, or my locker, or my kitchen?” she asked.
Both Fin and Munch shook their heads.
“Oh God, what if I really do have a stalker?” she said. “I ate all the ones in my apartment last night because I thought they were safe and it was one of you guys.”
“Do you feel like you’ve been poisoned?” Munch asked. “Seeing double? Feeling faint?”
Olivia didn’t feel great exactly, but she’d chalked that up to her current situation, and how things seemed to roar back with an unexpected vengance on day five.
“Because if you don’t feel like you’re dying, chances are you’re okay,” Munch said.
“You want us to get TARU to tap camera footage of your apartment for the last week?” Fin asked. “You know I’ll do it.”
Olivia shook her head.
“I haven’t found any candy yet today so let’s just wait,” she said. “Maybe it was all a fluke. Sorry to accuse you guys of something you didn’t do.”
“S’alright,” Fin said. “Glad you told us about it.”
What Olivia didn’t see as she turned around to go back to her own desk was the look Fin and Munch shot each other across their desks. Munch held onto a bemused smile while Fin cocked his eyebrow and pouted.
Day 6
Olivia finally felt more like herself today, which was good, considering they spent the better part of the day driving around Manhattan in a snowstorm chasing down their perp. The entire thing ended in a foot chase with Olivia pushing the guy into a snowbank but falling in after him in the tussle.
She’d been shivering by the time they made it back to the precinct, and Elliot all but forced her upstairs to shower and change and said he and Fin or Lake would take care of the interrogation and booking.
She’d argued, of course. But when her teeth really started to chatter and Cragen had ordered her to change and warm up, she didn’t have much of a choice.
But unluckily enough for Olivia, this was the third or fourth time this month she’d needed a change of clothes at work, and she was out of additional outfits.
“Maybe if I actually did laundry every week like a regular person, this wouldn’t happen,” she muttered as she spun the combination lock on Elliot’s locker (the twins’ birth year), standing there dripping wet and rifling through his things.
She found a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, boxers, and gym socks, and luckily she remembered to bring back her own tennis shoes the other day. But even drowning in Elliot’s clothes she was still cold.
That’s when she spotted their shared grey hoodie in the back of the locker.
“Theif,” she whispered, though nobody was around to hear her.
Technically it’d been his hoodie first, but she’d claimed it since she’d been back from Oregon.
Slowly, she slid her arms into the sleeves and zipped the zipper up to mid-chest. Much better. She pulled her hair into a wet, high ponytail and then shoved her hands into the pockets. What she found inside was a big surprise.
A couple of leftover Hershey’s kisses. Red, green, and silver.
“Son of a bitch ,” she said, pulling them out and stuffing two in her mouth before heading back down to the bullpen.
It was time to get some answers.
Day 7
After a long week, Olivia finally had the day off.
Elliot and Lake had been in interrogation with the suspect well into the wee hours of the morning. Olivia left long before they were done so she didn’t get the chance to confront her stupid, privacy-invading (and if she had to admit it, incredibly sweet) partner about the little game he’d been playing for the last week.
But he had the day off too, and she was going right for the source.
So she schlepped herself out to the little apartment in Queens and banged continuously on the door until it finally opened with a bleary-eyed Elliot standing there in his underwear.
“You make a habit of answering your door without pants on?” she asked as she pushed her way into the apartment.
“It’s early, Liv,” he said. “What the hell?”
“It’s 9 a.m.,” she said, making a beeline for the kitchen.
“Well I didn’t get home until 5,” he said. “What the hell are you looking for?”
Olivia continued to open and close cupboards until she found exactly what she was looking for next to the instant coffee.
“Aha,” she said pulling the bag out and laying it on the counter.
Elliot slumped down onto one of the bar stools, resting his cheek against his fist, arm propped up on the counter.
“Aha, what?” he said. “So I have leftover Christmas candy in late January like all the rest of New York. You had to practically break down my door on our day off for that ?”
“Don’t play dumb,” she said. “I thought it was Fin and Munch after I found some in the car after they borrowed it. But I should have known it was you. You know my locker combination. You have a key to my apartment.”
“So what gave it away?” he asked.
“They were in the pockets of the hoodie,” she said.
“Damn, I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling kid,” he joked.
“El, what the hell was this all about?” she asked.
He bit his lip, and Olivia just stared at him, arms crossed, waiting for an answer.
“I have three daughters, Liv,” he said. “And an ex-wife, and I know how things can get during that time of the month.”
“How did you even know it was that time?” she asked. “Are you tracking my cycle or something?”
“No,” Elliot said. “I just… I noticed a few months ago you were more irritable than normal, and food wasn’t sitting quite right with you. I thought you might be pregnant but then it all seemed to go away only to happen again the following month. Didn’t take a genius to figure it out.”
“So you knew there was nothing wrong with my Pad Thai,” she said. “Or yours.”
“Guilty,” he said. “Kathleen likes soda and salt along with her chocolate. Thought you might be the same.”
It was Olivia’s turn to sigh and go silent.
“Why’d you do it, El?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, standing up from the stool and coming around the counter to meet her, either not caring that he still wasn’t wearing pants, or he’d forgotten. “I just thought you might need a few kisses to get you through your week.”
Olivia almost swallowed her tongue when the words left his mouth. Elliot, her newly divorced, highly single partner did not just tell her she needed kisses to get through hell week while he was standing there in his black, very tight, boxer briefs.
It seemed like the implication of his words hit Elliot at the same time they hit Olivia, and he immediately backtracked.
“I meant candy,” he said. “Candy kisses. You knew that. Course you knew what I meant, right?”
“Right,” Olivia said, shaking her head far too vigorously.
She stared down at her shoes for a minute, wondering if trying to slip out right at this moment would make things more or less awkward.
“If you must know,” she said. “I went off birth control a few months ago to see if I could try getting pregnant with a donor.”
“You find a donor you like yet?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Doctor told me to wait three months and get a few tests done before I pick anything out. She doesn’t want to get my hopes up since I’m almost 40. She actually thinks I’m going to have a harder time with a donor than the good old-fashioned way.”
Admitting all that out loud definitely made things more awkward. So did raising her eyes to look at Elliot.
“You want this, Liv?” he asked. “You want to be a mother?”
“I do,” she whispered.
She expected Elliot to tell her everything wrong with the idea. Why passing on her genes wasn’t the right choice, why getting pregnant at almost 40 was a risk, and why she couldn’t juggle a career and a child. But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he reached over to her and cupped her cheek.
“You’re gonna make the best mom,” he said. “That kid is going to be lucky as hell. And anyway you want to go about doing that, I’ll support you in any way I can.”
His thumb was lazily stroking her cheek now, and it felt nice . It felt nice to be seen during hell week, and nice to know that someone believed in her. And while she probably should be overthinking the fact that Elliot may or may not just have offered to father her child (the good old-fashioned way), she wasn’t going to dwell on that quite yet, because it finally felt like someone saw her and cared about her.
“How ‘bout I go get dressed and we’ll go out for breakfast,” Elliot said, pulling his hand back. “Then you can tell me all about your options.”
“I don’t think you really need to hear all those details,” she said. “We’re already too close, don’t you think?”
“How’s this any different than you seeing the stills from my last colonoscopy?” he asked.
“Because I didn’t ask to see those,” she said. “I just opened the wrong envelope.”
“Well, just breakfast then,” Elliot said, heading for his bedroom. “And we can talk or not talk about whatever you want.”
“Just one question,” she said as he turned around to face her. “Who’s buying?”
“Well, if you’re going to be starting a family soon, I guess the right answer is….” he trailed off.
“You,” Olivia said with a smirk.
“Exactly,” he said, turning around to go back to the bedroom.
But before Olivia could even spin on her heel and head for the couch, Elliot was at her side. He pulled her into a quick hug and planted a firm kiss on her forehead.
“What was that for?” she asked when he pulled back.
“Consider it a kiss to build a dream on,” he said, snagging two Hershey’s kisses from the bag on the counter and tossing her one before popping the other in his mouth. “Be out in 10.”
And as Elliot shut the door to his bedroom behind him and Olivia unwrapped her candy, she couldn’t help but dream of a little girl with bright blue eyes and brown curls in her future, begging and pleading for just one piece of candy before breakfast.
And Olivia couldn’t think of anything sweeter.