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He showed up.
It’s what staggers her most of all. He showed up - for her. Not because he needed help on a case. Not out of necessity. No, Elliot Stabler had shown up out of worry for her. She tries to ignore how it makes her stomach flutter, how a warm feeling hugs her body like a blanket.
His hands slowly reach out to cup her chin, his thumb caressing her cheek softly. He turns her face slightly as he inspects what’s left of her black eye, his expression pained.
“Liv.” His voice sounds vulnerable, laced with regret as he looks into her eyes. “Why didn’t you- You know you can call me, right?”
She closes her eyes against his piercing gaze, a feeling of betrayal still lingering in her heart as she takes a few steps back.
“Can I?”
The question is accusatory, and she opens her eyes to see his brows furrow in confusion.
It’s been nearly two years since he came back into her life. Two years, and she still has no idea how to fucking talk to this man she had once called her ‘best friend.’ Sure, they’ve done cases together and talked to one another when they’ve had the chance. They’ve even danced together at Fin’s non-wedding. He knows the basics of how and when she’d gotten Noah, yet they haven’t talked about what really matters.
He’d tried. Multiple times. She just turned him down every time their conversation had gone deeper because what if she bares her soul to him just for him to decide it’s too much baggage for him? What if it caused him to disappear undercover again for months because he doesn’t know how to cope, leaving her wounded and alone just when she thought she could finally have it all? Throwing away a decades-long friendship and making the one person she loves most drift away from her all over again.
She couldn’t handle that. Not again.
There are too many what ifs, too many risks in going through with this conversation. She should send him away, back to the safety of his apartment where she doesn’t have to worry about the dams of her heart breaking and flooding his with years of torment and regret.
“What does that-”
“Elliot, just go-”
They speak at the same time, and his eyes squint as he takes a step towards her.
“Go back home, Elliot. I’m fine. The arrests have already been made. He was just a scared kid who was forced into this life.” She tries to reassure him, but he just scoffs and shakes his head at her words.
She can see how badly he’s trying to keep it together, and when he points his finger at her, his hand is shaking slightly.
“That’s bullshit, Liv. It’s bullshit, and you know it.”
Taking a deep breath, she turns and walks further into her apartment. He follows her, takes a seat in front of the the kitchen counter as she stands behind it, and sips her half empty glass of water.
“How much do you know?”
She braces herself against the counter, watches as he swallows thickly and rubs the scruff on his face.
“Enough to know that this wasn’t just a scared kid’s doing. That this came from higher up,” he says thickly. “Enough to know something unspeakable happened to you ten years ago.”
It’s silent for what feels like hours after that, her eyes wide like a doe in headlights and her anxiety corrupting every inch of her body. He knows. He knows, and there’s no way she could even try to change the subject because she can practically see this information is eating him up inside.
“How?”
Her voice is weak and vulnerable, and she hates herself for not being able to disguise it from this man.
“People talk, Liv. They know about BX9 being after you. They’ve heard about the gang leader having been cellmates with a man who attacked you all these years ago…”
She nods, a sad smile forming on her face as she folds her arms.
“He did a little more than attack me, Elliot.”
She paces around the kitchen, doing everything to avoid his eyes on her.
“What happened, Liv?”
There’s a part of her that wants to walk away from him, from this conversation. That wants to just walk towards her bedroom, lock the door and wear noise-cancelling headphones until he leaves.
She also knows that if she were to make that decision, she might not ever find the courage to tell him.
She swallows her fears, stills, and looks at him.
“They were… the most terrifying days of my entire life,” she starts, pacing through her kitchen again. “He uh- he had me for four days. Physically and emotionally tortured me, starved me… Vodka and Bourbon were all he’d let me have.” She swallows. Her throat is burning with unshed tears, and when she looks over at him, the look on his face makes her pray for the floor to just swallow her whole. He’s going to blame himself for this, she knows. Be angry with himself for not knowing, for not asking sooner.
Olivia moves around the counter and stops when she’s behind him. She lays her hand on his shoulder and squeezes as he turns towards her.
“I’m okay, Elliot. I wouldn’t say I’m over it. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it, but I’ve dealt with it. I wasn’t alone.” She grabs his hands and sits down on the chair next to him, determined to continue now that she’s started.
“When I woke up rolled up in my bedsheets, slung over his shoulder, I thought that was it. He was going to rape me if he hadn’t already and leave me to die in a random alleyway.”
Her voice sounds foreign to her own ears, raspy and vulnerable and scared, and how she hates looking back on that time in her life. His hands tighten around hers, his eyes red and sorrowful.
“Did he?”
“Rape me?”
“Mhm.”
She shrugged, thinking of the best way to answer his question.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it rape, but…”
As soon as the words leave her mouth, he drops her hands and stands up, turning his back to her as his hands cover his face before turning to face her again. She hears him sniff loudly and feels how her heart starts to ache at the sound of him so broken.
“Son of a bitch.”
How is she supposed to do this? How the hell is she supposed tell her best friend and potential future lover about the graphic things Lewis had done to her? How her bathroom trips hadn’t just been bathroom trips and how his three counts of sodomy hadn’t been completely made up. It’s a part of her story she’d only told her therapist about, months after Lewis had put a bullet in his own brain. Elliot doesn’t need those images in his brain. Not now, not ever.
“What matters is that I’m alive, El. It’s been ten years and apart from a few… hiccups, I’ve thrived.”
She doesn’t know if she’s trying to reassure him or herself of that fact. Yes, she’s thrived. Despite the ‘hiccups’ being way more than hiccups – she’d gotten Noah, she’d become a Captain and had formed her own little family.
“Is it true?” he asks, his eyes boring holes in the wall behind her. It’s like he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
“Is what true?”
It’s like he’s in a haze, and she takes his warm cheeks in her hands as she tells him to look at her.
“Is what true, Elliot?” she repeats. A tear falls from his eye, and she wipes it away with her thumb and frowns.
“That you’ve held a gun to your head and pulled the trigger?”
She freezes. How much had this man heard? And exactly how often are people still talking about something that had happened to her ten years ago? She retracts her hands from his face and squeezes his arm before walking back to the kitchen counter.
“It is,” she answers distantly, and he curses again.
“What else have you heard?”
He shakes his head. “Stuff.”
“Like what?”
“That… to quote some uni: ‘HNT would be much better fit for you than SVU since you and people around you seem to get taken hostage nearly every year.’”
She snorts at that, refilling her glass of water and drinking a few sips from it.
“What? You think that’s funny?”
His eyes are wide with disbelief, and for some fucked up reason, she starts laughing even louder at that.
“I mean, they’re not wrong,” she says with a rueful smile, and signals him to sit back down at the other side of the counter. He does as she says, sitting sideways on the chair as he tries his best to blink away the tears that threaten to spill over.
“What do you say we call it a night, hm? It’s late, Noah is coming home early tomorrow morning…” She trails off as she slowly walks toward him, nudging his knees apart so she can stand between them.
He nods absentmindedly. “Noah okay? Heard he saw it happen.”
Olivia sighs deeply, scratching her eyebrow while she feels tears pool in her eyes at the thought of her sweet boy.
“He’s worried. Amanda told me he’s either been having nightmares or trouble falling asleep at night.”
She feels guilty. So fucking guilty because how stupid could she have been to approach those strangers while her son was right fucking there, watching from inside her apartment lobby? She could’ve waited for the backup she’d called. She could’ve stalled instead of waving her gun around immediately, led them further down the street so Noah wouldn’t have been able to see anything.
“It’s not your fault, Liv. He’ll be okay.” He tries to reassure her, but she shakes her head, trying to ignore how Elliot had grabbed her hands and is now rubbing comforting circles on the palms of them.
She closes her eyes, focuses on her breathing, before opening them again.
“He, uh- Noah kind of had a meltdown when I told him he had to go somewhere safe until we arrested the people behind the attack,” she confesses.
He hums, and she shakes her head slightly.
“He was incredibly clingy right after it happened. He refused to go to bed before I did and insisted to spend the night in my bed. He’s twelve, El. Usually even the suggestion makes him cringe.”
“He wanted to make sure you’re okay,” he said softly, and a tear rolled down her face.
“When I wanted to get out of bed the next morning, he told me to stay. Made me a grilled cheese and coffee to eat in bed, arguing that I shouldn’t move around with bruised ribs.”
“You call that a meltdown?” Elliot laughed, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“But,” she continued dramatically, “he was ignoring his feelings by trying to take care of me – which, by the way, is something he should never even have to do… When I told him he had to go somewhere else for the time being, he got so angry, Elliot.” She whispers the last part.
“What did he say?”
She swallows. “He said he’s done fearing something will happen to me every single day. That he’s done with seeing his nannies more often than me. He begged me to retire, and when I said I couldn’t do that, he yelled that he hated me and locked himself in his room.”
Elliot nods slowly.“Okay, I see… He’s just scared, Liv. I remember Elizabeth saying something similar the last time I got shot during our partnership. She was scared that the next time, I wouldn’t be as lucky.”
“I’m thinking about it, you know?”
“Retiring?”
“Mhm.” She fidgets with her hands. “I’m never going to feel like I’ve done enough. But Noah’s just growing up so fast, and I feel like I’m going to regret missing out on so many important things.”
He pushes her back slightly as he stands up from the chair, suddenly so close to her she feels him breathing down on her skin. She shudders slightly, her eyes falling on his lips automatically before catching herself and quickly averting them again. The beat of her heart speeds up. Damn this man.
“Sleep on it. See if you still feel the same way in a few weeks. It’s a big change, Liv. You have to think this through.” Unlike I did, hangs in the air, and she nods.
She knows she can’t make this decision half-assed. She has to have a backup plan first, something that will keep her busy during the day so she won’t lose her mind from boredom. Maybe she could write that book she’s always wanted to write, or she could start something to support and help the victims she works with daily.
“Now, let’s get you to bed. You look exhausted.”
He smiles affectionately at her, a smile that has always made her feel weak in the knees. A smile that makes her feel like she’s the center of his world. She rolls her eyes, feigning annoyance as she tries to keep her feelings at bay.
“Gee, thanks.”
He chuckles, then moves around her to put away the food packages that lay around her kitchen counter and turn off the lights in her apartment. In the hue of the city lights shining through her windows, she watches him make his way to the door and come to a halt in front of it.
She expects him to turn around and say ‘goodnight,’ but he never does. Instead, he turns the locks on her door and takes off his shoes.
Her mouth suddenly feels dry at the knowledge that he isn’t planning to leave anytime soon. She feels her hands start to shake a little as he makes his way back to her. She’s petrified – not of him, but of the implication of it all.
It’s happening, a little voice in the back of her head yells. It’s happening, it’s happening, it’s happening!
He’s not leaving her, driving out of her neighborhood and into his own. Instead, it seems like he’s driving them both back to the home they’d left behind all those years ago. Ready to restore what he’d once abandoned, to fix the damage he’d caused and make it habitable for them both to exist in again. The thought nearly makes her weep.
They meet in the doorway of her hallway, and she grabs his hand as she wordlessly leads him to the bathroom. It feels weird to be here, together with him – yet not at all awkward.
Turning away from him, she searches in an overfull drawer for a spare toothbrush and sighs in relief as she finds a whole pack of four of them.
“I can let you get ready first. I’ll-” She pauses when she sees the grin on his face. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re nervous, aren't you?”
She glares at him, her cheeks reddening slightly.
“Well, forgive me, Elliot. It’s been over a decade since you last crashed at my place, and back then-” She stops herself and closes her eyes. Shit.
“And what? Back then I had a wife, is that what you wanted to say?”
She nods – shit, shit, shit.
He chuckles, grabs the toothbrushes out of her hand and places them into a cabinet.
“Just say the word and I’ll be out of your hair, Liv. Just want to take care of you for a bit, that’s all.”
Her brows furrow. “Take care of me?”
“Mhm,” he answers. “Sit down on the edge of your bathtub.”
She does as he says, confusion evident on her face as he grabs a washcloth and wets it.
“You’re not wearing any make-up, are you?”
She shakes her head, and he cups her face in his left hand as he slowly moves the wet washcloth over her face, careful of the bruise underneath her eye.
The feel of his hand is so big, so warm, and her heart clenches. They’d cleaned each other’s cuts often, but this feels way more intimate somehow – in the privacy of her bathroom. The way he’s looking at her doesn’t particularly help, either – so full of love and admiration.
“Talk me through your routine,” he says as he puts away the washcloth and turns to look at the many skincare products in her cabinet above the sink.
Her breath hitches in her throat. He’s really doing this.
She tells him, and his fingers slide over her skin in a way that almost lulls her to sleep. It feels safe, here together with him. Safe and warm and cozy and goddamnit.
It feels like home.
“Thank you,” she whispers as he finishes, and he smiles at her in return.
They finish up, and when she walks out of the bathroom after peeing, her eyebrow shoots up at the sight of him still leaning against the wall of the hallway.
“Why aren’t you in bed yet?”
His eyes roam over her body unapologetically. She’d changed into her PJs after kicking him out of the bathroom, but the shorts and simple T-shirt did absolutely nothing to hide her body.
“Wasn’t sure if you wanted me to take the couch or your actual bed,” he shrugs. “You look beautiful.”
Her eyes cast down for a moment, then look up into his. She isn’t used to this side of him. The side that so openly appreciates her, the side that had always been forced to stay hidden all those years ago.
The corners of her mouth lift up, and she takes his hand again.
“Come.”
But neither of them move.
She has no idea how the hell the lines blurred so fast tonight. How she let him in so quickly despite her fears.
He moves closer to her. His breathing grows deeper, and before she knows it, his hand is cradling the back of her head as his lips are on hers and his other hand carefully pulls her against him. The kiss is maddening. Passionate, yet sweet, and how in the world did she manage to stay away from him all these years?
His scent surrounds her even after the kiss breaks. She feels so incredibly loved, and fuck, she can’t help the enormous smile from forming on her face. The smile erupts in a full-on belly laugh, and when he joins her, she presses her lips against his again. She can’t believe this is happening. Elliot freaking Stabler is kissing her, and she feels like the luckiest woman in the world.
Minutes later, both of them are lying cuddled up underneath the covers of her bed - the beating of his heart making her eyes grow heavy.
“Thank you for coming home,” she whispers.
His kiss on the top of her head is the last thing she feels before succumbing to a dreamless sleep.