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March 31, 1984: A Tweed Blazer
Olivia was convinced tonight had been a dream. But if it was, she never wanted to wake up. She and Burton had spent the afternoon cycling through Central Park. Then they’d had a picnic on the great lawn just as night was falling with the city lights all around them. It’d all been magical.
When Burton kissed her, she realized he was the person she’d always been looking for. He loved Olivia for who she was . It didn’t matter where she came from. He talked with her about literature and art. He made her that mixtape with the sophisticated songs. Burton saw her as a woman. Not some kid, and surely not the monster her mother saw every time she looked at Olivia.
“How about a nightcap?” Burton asked as he was walking her home from their picnic.
The right thing (the legal thing) would have been to refuse, but Burton knew how grown-up Olivia was. He had said it himself, age was just a number.
“That sounds wonderful,” Olivia said, leaning further into his side.
And after a few glasses of cheap red wine, Olivia’s life changed forever. She and Burton made love on the bed in his cramped little apartment, the moonlight streaming through the window with the city light still twinkling just beyond.
She was a woman now. A desirable beautiful woman. Serena and the nuns at school had always told Olivia she had to wait. That she should only go to bed with her husband, not have random sex with strangers. But Burton was going to be her husband. She was sure of it.
The way he draped his blazer over her shoulders when he finally walked her home for the evening, it was a tender gesture. It wasn’t something any man just did for any woman. Thankfully, Serena had been passed out drunk on the couch when Olivia got home and didn’t see her wearing it. Olivia could only imagine what she would have said if she did.
“Humbert Humbert is throwing his clothes at you now,” Serena may have sneered.
What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Olivia made sure to keep the blazer hidden in the back of her closet. She only pulled it out to wear in the dark of night when Serena was dead to the world. She’d rub its velvety elbow patches and think of how it felt to have Burton touch her skin. She remembered what it was like to feel like someone truly loved her. Olivia knew she’d never give the blazer back. Not even when she had to give back the engagement ring.
The blazer moved with her to college and every subsequent apartment after. Olivia always felt that if she kept it, somehow Burton would find his way back to her.
He did, eventually, about 38 years later.
And when he left this time, Olivia threw that mixtape in the reservoir and burned the tweed blazer in her new fireplace one night when Noah wasn’t home.
It no longer brought her a sense of comfort. The only thing she felt as she watched flames lick the elbow patches was deep, burning betrayal and shame.
March 20, 2008: Red Plaid Boxers
Olivia found them by accident.
She couldn’t remember the last time she actually cleaned out under her bed. The clutter was pretty much what you’d expect: a few missing socks, some hair ties, a comb she thought she lost three years ago.
And one pair of men’s red plaid boxers.
They were Kurt’s of course. She remembered pulling them off of him about two weeks ago, the last time he’d been over before this press leak mess happened. She’d tossed them off the side of the bed and he’d been gone the next morning before she got up.
Apparently, he went commando that day.
Olivia tossed them in the wash, intending to give them back the next time they got together.
Then Ed Tucker happened.
“We dumped your phones, Detective,” he sneered. “Do you recognize this number?”
She wasn’t about to lie and dig a bigger hole.
“I think you tipped off your friend Moss and gave him the story,” Tucker said.
He was wrong, of course. And she sure hated having to admit to Tucker of all people whom she’d been sleeping with recently.
“You’re creating this fictional booty call to save your own ass,” he’d said.
She almost wished it were true.
Especially when the entire conversation ended up with her suspended for leaking information she didn’t leak. And having to hear Tucker yell something about her “screwing the paper boy” to Elliot as she got on the elevator.
She intended to go to Kurt’s office and ask him what the hell was going on. But somehow despite a 15-minute head start, Elliot was already in there when she walked in.
Truthfully, she didn’t know which one of them she was more pissed at.
Kurt promised to call IAB on her behalf, but not before he asked her why she wouldn’t move in with him.
They’d only been dating three months and she didn’t even tell him what happened at Sealview.
Kurt never got those boxers back. Olivia slept in them until the tumbler in the washing machine ripped a hole in the crotch and she threw them away.
March 28, 2012: A Brown Scarf
The scarf was, by all accounts, ugly .
It was the exact shade of brown that made you think dog turd.
The thing had been hanging on Olivia’s coat rack for a few months since she started dating David Haden. But she didn’t actually notice it until now.
Now, of course, being that they broke up. And while they hadn’t been living together, quite a few of his things had migrated into her space. They were all gone now, except for that ugly ass scarf.
He probably left it there on purpose. Probably hated it himself and saw it as an excuse to leave the thing behind and not have to deal with it again.
Instead, it hung there on the coat rack peg, mocking her.
“ You never really cared about him ,” it seemed to whisper. “ He’s just a poor substitute for the man you really miss. The man you could never have .”
The scarf wasn’t wrong, but Olivia was a bit worried that maybe she should get her head examined if she was taking advice from an ugly ass inanimate object.
She wore it to work today thanks to an unseasonable cold snap. She “accidentally” dropped it into the lost and found at the front desk, hoping this time the scarf, and all her bad decisions, would stay lost for good.
March 30, 2014: An Old, Threadbare Poison T-Shirt
Olivia loved this t-shirt.
It was just the right side of too-big and slouched off her shoulder if she put it on just so. It was buttery soft from so many washes and had a few holes in the armpits.
Something about this t-shirt felt safe .
If only the person she’d gotten it from had made her feel just as safe.
She felt bad, of course, for breaking things off with Brian.
“You and me, we found each other at the darkest, lowest points of our lives, right?” she’d said to him. “You got shot, demoted. I got hurt and you got me through that.”
He had. Really he had. Olivia hadn’t wanted to think about where she would have gone, what she would have done if Brian hadn’t been there in the aftermath of William Lewis.
No, he didn’t do everything right. He had never been good with victims. It’s why he had to leave SVU in the first place. But he tried like hell, the best he knew how.
On the really bad nights, the ones with the most terrible nightmares that featured all the vile, horrific things Lewis could have done to her, for some strange reason, all Olivia wanted to do was put on this t-shirt. It felt like a comforting hug, and it smelled like Brian (until it started smelling like her because she wore it so much).
It started one night when he was on duty and she was alone. She’d put it on to feel like he was with her, to try to quell the fear bouncing through her chest like a lightning bolt. But then even on nights when he was home, she’d slip it on.
One night she couldn’t find it. Apparently, it’d been in the wash.
“Where’s that shirt you have?” she croaked, hating the way her voice sounded like sandpaper in the middle of a panic attack. “The Poison one?”
Brian hadn’t said anything. He just kissed the top of her head and ran it through a fluff cycle with a few dryer sheets and brought it back, warm and toasty so she could curl up inside it.
When it came time for him to pack his things the morning after their first and last “I love yous,” she felt sad folding it and putting it in the cardboard box.
But just as she was about to drop it in, Brian caught her wrist.
“Keep it,” he said, gathering the fabric up and pushing the whole thing into her hand.
“It’s not mine,” she said.
“It was always yours, Liv,” Brian said. “Everything that’s mine, it was always yours.”
January 15, 2017: Navy Blue Sweatpants
Nobody warned Olivia that motherhood was about 98% joy and an equal 98% exhaustion.
If she thought really hard, there was probably a time when she used to dress nicely during her off hours. She’d go out for a beer with the squad or to dance with Alex. She had a life.
Of course, it was a lonely life. This one, with a little boy asleep in her lap, was much more fulfilling.
Except she didn’t dress cute anymore, not on her time off. These days, when chasing after a rambunctious three-year-old through the house, she preferred a pair of oversized navy blue sweatpants.
She found them in a drawer last week. One week after she and Ed ended things. He hadn’t moved in (she hadn’t wanted to jump that gun after Brian, especially not with Noah in the house) but enough of his things had been there that she was still finding them now.
Nothing she felt the need to return though. The man thought he could retire, so he could definitely buy himself a new pair of sweatpants. Ones that didn’t have a big green stain on them from when they painted Noah’s room two months ago, or a rip in the left pocket that she meant to sew after she pulled them off of him a little too forcefully one night.
“Somebody’s eager,” he’d quipped, cocking an eyebrow while simultaneously taking two big handfuls of her ass.
She looked down at Noah asleep on her chest and something just felt like it was missing .
No, Olivia knew she didn’t need a man in her life. Despite what the adoption agencies told her all those years ago, she knew she would be a fine single mother. She had a nanny and she built a family for Noah from her squad and people close to her.
But without Ed here to hold them both, by not being able to feel the rumble of a laugh in his chest against her back while they watched something utterly stupid on TV, or to watch him just watching Noah sleep from the doorway sometimes… everything just felt a little empty.
It’d only been two weeks since they ended things. Maybe she could call him back. Maybe she should apologize and be honest with him, that he was exactly what she wanted but she was terrified that it wouldn’t last. She’d alluded to as much before when she told him she was crying because she thought her happiness wouldn’t last.
But she never called.
She kept the sweatpants though, tucked in the back of a drawer. She hardly ever wore them until the night she got the phone call that the only (available) man she ever truly saw having a life with, starting a family with, growing old with had taken his own life.
The rain poured outside and Olivia snuggled into those sweatpants and felt the ache of loss wrack her entire body.
April 2, 2023: A Gray Hoodie
It’d been almost three months since they’d seen each other in person. Since that night he told her that he cared for her. He called her and Noah family (for the second time, considering he’d invited them to a family get-together two Christmases before).
He knew how much she always wanted a family.
But instead of embracing him, embracing whatever was happening between them, she’d backed against the fridge and clung to her own body for dear life, trying to hold all the broken pieces inside.
She wanted nothing more than to be loved, to have a family, and to belong . And every time she got close, she backed off like she’d been burned.
Because despite what Lindstrom had told her time and time again, Olivia didn’t feel like she deserved happiness. She was always afraid it would never last, and it never did. Not in her experience. If she was being honest, she was still waiting for the day when CFS knocked down the door and dragged Noah away from her. He was 11 now.
But your perspective has a funny way of changing when the (now available) man you’d always imagined yourself marrying and having a family with got shot three times in the middle of a freak spring snowstorm.
Ayanna had called to inform Olivia of the incident. She thought it would stop Olivia from trying to get to the hospital to see him.
That backfired.
Except she had to park on the street last night and the plows snowed her car in and it would take more effort to dig out than it would to wait for him to get discharged.
“You better bring him straight here when he gets out,” Olivia said to Ayanna, who promised she would.
It took a few hours but there was finally a knock on her door.
Elliot and Ayanna stood behind it, her looking annoyed and him partially slouched over with his left arm in a sling.
“It was just a flesh wound,” Elliot said. “Two of them didn’t even hit. I told her we didn’t have to make this stop.”
“Actually you did,” Olivia said. “Because I asked her to bring you here.”
Elliot’s eyes widened as he turned to Ayanna.
“You didn’t tell me she…” Elliot started.
“Nah,” Ayanna said, holding her hands up and backing down the hall. “I did what I was asked. I’m off duty. Night, Liv.”
Elliot turned back to her, eyes still wide as saucers.
“I know you do a shit job of taking care of yourself when you’re injured,” she said. “Wasn’t letting you go home alone, in a blizzard no less where you’d probably try to go out on the terrace and down the steps and break your neck next.”
“Pot,” Elliot said. “Meet kettle.”
“Just shut up and get in here,” she said.
Elliot didn’t hesitate.
She offered to make him tea, which he declined. She offered to get him water so he could take his painkillers, which he declined. But he was clearly uncomfortable.
“They said I was probably going to have to change the bandage when I go home, alright?” He said. “It’s sticking, and it hurts like hell.”
“Hmm, just like old times,” she mused, grabbing his hand and leading him to the bathroom, thankful Noah was already asleep and not up to ask 400 questions about why Elliot was there and what had happened to him.
She forced Elliot to sit down on the closed toilet lid.
“Shirt and sling off,” Olivia said, opening the box of gauze.
“If you wanted a show, Benson, all you had to do was ask,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Of course, I probably would have preferred you asked before I had holes in me.”
“Shut up,” Olivia said, trying to tamp down the feelings rolling through her gut.
Elliot got shot again . He could have died for real . And here they were still tip-toeing around the powder keg.
She tried not to think about any of it as she straddled his lap to get level with the bullet wound, a dead ringer for, and right next to the identical scar he had from Bushido.
Looking at the fresh wound next to the old one brought tears to her eyes. There was so much history between them. So many literal and figurative scars. And yet they were stuck. They were never going to move forward until she was actually ready to move .
“Liv, hey,” Elliot said, bringing his uninjured arm up and taking her chin in his hand, tipping it up so they were looking in one another’s eyes. “You’re crying.”
She couldn’t do much else but nod.
“I’m okay, Olivia,” he said. “I’m here and I’m okay.”
He was here. He had been here, and the only thing standing in Olivia’s way was herself.
So she leaned forward, and kissed him.
It wasn’t exactly graceful. Teeth clacked, and he bit her lip and she might have bit his tongue. But it was the most perfect first kiss she ever had.
If she was lucky, it was going to be her last first kiss ever. And there was something particularly poetic about it all.
One kiss turned into more, which turned into a little something else with her sitting astride his lap the way she was. It was all going well until he groaned in pain.
“I’m sorry,” she said, jumping up and back startled. “I shouldn’t have… because you’re…”
“Liv, never apologize for kissing me,” he said. “ Ever . I wanna keep going, but, uh, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do half the things I’ve always wanted to do with just one arm.”
“Things you’ve always wanted to do?” she asked.
“Oh, trust me, there’s a list,” he said. “Do you know how long I’ve been thinking about this?”
“Two years?” Olivia guessed, pressing the bandage to the wound.
“Try twenty-two, at least ,” he said. “Maybe more.”
Her throat suddenly felt dry.
“Is that so?” she asked, adding a flirty lilt to her voice and she looked him in the eye again.
It was Elliot’s turn to nod dumbly.
“Any of those thoughts ever stay to say, me taking the lead?” she asked.
“At least half of ‘em,” he said, almost in a growl.
“And of that half, any that only require one of your arms?” Olivia asked.
“I’d say about a quarter are one-armed or hands-free,” he said.
“Hmm,” Olivia said. “You see I have a few of my own that might be along those same lines.”
She reached up and cradled his face in her hands before standing and walking to her bedroom, hoping he’d get the message to follow her.
He did.
A few hours later, though maybe a little quieter and more logistically challenging than they both originally thought, Elliot and Olivia knew each other inside and out.
And Olivia almost wanted to laugh. It’d been nearly 40 years since she’d done that for the first time. This time, with Elliot, it was better for a lot of obvious reasons. She knew her body now. She knew what men liked. But it was the afterglow that made her realize she didn’t know a damn thing about life at 16.
Olivia had thought she was so sophisticated for sleeping with an older man. She thought she knew what love was, mixtapes and cheap wine and tweed blazers. Stolen kisses and hiding from her mother. But none of that had been love.
Elliot calling her beautiful even after seeing her scars. The way he cleaned her up after, pulled her close, and wrapped his arms around her. The way he told her that his biggest regret in life was leaving her without saying goodbye, but he couldn’t tell her goodbye because he wasn’t ready to end their partnership or friendship.
That was true love.
When she felt Elliot shivering a bit later, despite both of them redressing in case Noah decided to wake up and barge into her room unannounced, she knew what to do.
Elliot looked at her a bit confused in the half-dark room lit by the moon. He watched her cross to the dresser and pull something familiar out of one of the drawers.
His gray hoodie from 2007.
She’d kept it for years. Worn it on and off. Some nights when Brian’s Poison shirt alone didn’t cut it, she’d slide the hoodie over top like a suit of armor. If part of Elliot was with her, nothing could hurt her. Not really. Not even the devil himself.
But it was time that this piece of clothing finally went back to its rightful owner.
“Here,” Olivia said, nudging him up and helping him slide into it despite the sling. “You’re shivering.”
“Guess getting shot and left for dead in a blizzard will do that to you,” he quipped.
“Too soon for jokes, El,” she said.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “But hey, this isn’t my…”
“It is,” she said.
“You still have it?” he asked.
“Would you rather I had gotten rid of it?” she asked.
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m just surprised. I mean I figured after I left the way I did you wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me.”
“You made me feel safe, El,” she said. “When you were gone, when this was all I had left. Well, I tried to use it to fill the void.”
“I feel way less ridiculous for taking your red scarf with me to Italy now,” he said.
“I knew you swiped that,” she said.
“Oh, c’mon,” he said. “I got you an even nicer one for your next birthday.”
Olivia rolled her eyes.
“Consider the hoodie officially yours again,” she said. “Returned to its rightful owner.”
“It was always ours, Liv,” he said. “I only wore it so much because I liked when you borrowed it. Came back smelling like you. Like you were still with me even when I went home for the night.”
They were both silent for a bit, contemplating on what could have been if they’d just had these conversations in 2007.
Elliot was the first to lean back into the pillows. He lifted one side of the hoodie up and jutted his chin at her.
“Wanna see if it’s big enough for two?” he asked.
Slowly, Olivia made her way down Elliot’s body to curl into his uninjured side. She placed her head on his chest and could hear his heart beating, steady, strong and alive right under her ear. Elliot shoved his hand into the hoodie pocket and wrapped the material around both of them. Then he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss, and she couldn’t be certain, but possibly also a whispered “I love you” to the top of her head.
Out of all the lovers' clothes Olivia had kept, this was the only piece she ever gave back. But it was the right decision. Because being curled up with Elliot this way was what she’d always been trying to find by keeping those pieces of her past.
This was her present and her future.
This was home .