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1.
She sleeps on her side, one arm flung out.
The first few times she catches him in the gut with it, before her body gets used to sharing space and she starts flinging it the other way instead. She needs room between them to fall asleep but she’ll curl up next to him for a little while before, fingers splayed out on his chest like she’s feeling for a heartbeat. Maybe she is, Elliot doesn’t know. He sees her do the same thing with her kid, sometimes, when she pokes her head into his room at night. Checking to make sure he’s still breathing.
She snores, which Elliot knew already, but the difference is he no longer needs to feel guilty about knowing. Like the colour of her bra, and the scent of her deodorant, and — well. There were a lot of things he’d gotten used to pretending he hadn’t noticed.
It’s been an adjustment.
She doesn’t sleep through the night, most of the time, and after a few months she gave up pretending and started pulling out her earphones to listen to audiobooks in the dark. Elliot teased her about what she was reading, sure it was some Danielle Steel bullshit, but then he actually got a look at her phone screen one night and it was book four of the Percy Jackson series. She's been listening so she can keep up with Noah.
“When do I have the time to read anything?” she complained when he asked about it — genuinely, this time, because he felt like an ass for teasing. “My eyes hurt all the time, anyway. It’s just easier.”
He told her she could listen without earphones while they were both awake and she stared at him like he’d lost it completely and he tried not to take it personally; he was rewarded for not turning it into a fight when she started playing it in the car last week. She refused to start back at the beginning so she has to explain every single character and plot point; she acts like it irritates her, but Elliot’s pretty sure she’s enjoying it.
Her favourite character is Annabeth; Noah’s is Nico.
Elliot’s waiting for the next book to decide.
2.
She cooks, now.
She doesn’t get much more excited about it than she did ten years ago, but she knows her way around a few recipes now, forced into it by necessity. Simple stuff, mostly: french toast, brownies. Pasta salad. Noah’s always begging her for “green mac n’ cheese,” which she refused to cook in front of Elliot for months. He figured the sauce would just be pesto from a jar, but it turns out to be frozen broccoli, spinach, and cheese in a blender.
“Do not tell Noah,” she hisses when she finally caves, like it’s some life-or-death conspiracy. Elliot thinks back to the warzone their kitchen turned into when the twins were going through their joint picky eater phase, figures maybe it is. “It used to be the only way I could get him to eat this stuff.”
“It’s not bad,” Elliot offers, when she lets him taste test the sauce.
Olivia rolls her eyes.
“It’s basically baby food,” she says dryly. She raises her voice so Noah can hear her from the living room. “Dinos or turtles, baby?”
“Mom!” Noah huffs back, a petulant tone in his voice that makes it clear he’s embarrassed by the question. “C’mon!”
“Dinos it is,” Olivia says, shooting Elliot a conspiratorial grin as she reaches into the cabinet for a box of dinosaur-shaped pasta. Elliot tries to laugh quietly enough that Noah won’t notice and take offence.
“Gourmet,” he comments, still grinning, and Olivia clinks her wine glass against his in response.
“Well, it’s no aglio e olio,” she teases, exaggerating the accent on purpose. “But I do okay.”
“You’re doing great,” Elliot says, maybe a little too earnest — it makes her pause where she’d been reaching for the salt, look over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised. Elliot doesn’t walk it back, just raises his own in return, until Olivia huffs out a laugh and turns back to the pot. She doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that.
When they sit down to eat Elliot nudges Noah until he thanks her for the meal, chimes in with compliments of his own that make Olivia’s mouth twist with embarrassment.
“You ever try making it with pesto?” he asks her as they’re washing up, elbows bumping comfortably every time he hands her something to dry. “I bet it’d be good.”
The Olivia of six months ago would take it as a criticism, or a threat. She’d see it as Elliot encroaching onto Benson-only territory, a space she was so determined to keep safe. This Olivia doesn’t, though: all she does is shrug, a little loose from her second glass of wine.
“Maybe next time you can give it a try.”
3.
She still likes to let him drive.
Not just when he comes to get her for a date, or when they drive out somewhere for the weekend. She calls him at the end of the day, sometimes, hems and haws and asks about his day, where he is, whether he’s busy; the first time she has to spell it out for him but he picks it up quick after that, starts asking her if she wants him to swing around and pick her up.
If it’s not too much, she’ll say on the phone every time. It’s not a big deal, in the car. It’s nothing, in the elevator on the way up to her place.
You didn’t have to do that, when he picks up dinner first, doing his best to make it easier on both of them.
“Wanna try that again?” he asks in the car after she’s tried it again with the I’m fine, glancing over at the cut on her swollen lip. He has to remind himself to calm down, that if he starts a fight about it she’ll just let herself out and call an Uber.
Her laugh is little more than a dry exhale.
“Would you believe me if I told you I walked into a door?”
The joke doesn’t land; neither of them are the right audience for it. Elliot forces a smile anyway, trying not to sour the vibe, but his heart’s not in it and he knows she can tell.
“I don’t know why I said that,” she mutters, one hand coming to rub at her hairline as she twists her head to peer out the window. It’s drizzling outside, the sky a dirty grey. The slump of her shoulders makes the fight drain out of him, irritation slipping away as easily as it’d come.
“I get it,” he assures her. Her head lolls against the headrest until she’s looking at him instead, a tired smile on her face.
“You do, don’t you.”
The sentiment is so unexpected that he nearly runs the next stop sign in surprise.
“You do too,” he blurts out, still reeling a little. “Get me, I mean. You get me, too.”
Even he doesn’t know exactly what he’s trying to say. It’s probably the least articulate he’s ever been in his life — saying something, for a guy known for solving all his problems with his fists. He waits for the moment to shriek to a halt, for the bubble to burst as she remembers all the things she still holds against him. The things she holds against herself, too. She swears she’s trying to put them all down.
The car keeps moving. The bubble doesn’t burst.
Elliot reaches for her, then; he can’t help it, the way his free hand settles at the back of her neck, his thumb smoothing along her hairline. There are so many things inside of him that he doesn’t know how to say.
4.
On Easter she ghostwrites for the Easter Bunny.
Elliot tries desperately to keep his face neutral as Noah explains the Benson family tradition, how the Easter Bunny leaves a trail of letters to lead him on a scavenger hunt around the apartment, each letter with a clue to help him find the next. Elliot makes eye contact with Olivia over Noah’s head and she looks embarrassed about it, probably made worse by the way Elliot’s losing the battle against the grin that wants to take over his face.
She asks him if he has plans, though, after Noah’s trudged off to his room for the night, not quite making eye contact as she fields the invitation.
“You probably have — church, or — ”
“I’d love to come,” Elliot interrupts her. It takes her a few seconds to respond, wide-eyed with surprise — at him or at herself, Elliot doesn’t know.
“Oh,” she says faintly. “Well. Maybe — Eli could come, too. If he’s going to be home. He’s probably too old, but — he could come.”
It’s Elliot’s turn to be stunned, this time, that she’s doubled down instead of trying to ferret her way out of it.
“Don’t worry,” he assures her. “I’ll get him to come.”
Olivia rolls her eyes, and just like that they’re back on familiar territory.
“No domestic incidents on Easter, please,” she says dryly, as though she cared about the holiday at all before Noah got old enough to notice if other kids got candy on days when he didn’t.
Surprisingly, Elliot doesn’t have to convince Eli at all — he agrees readily the next time Elliot gets him on the phone. Eli’s attitude towards Olivia has softened a lot since she came to pick him up from jail, but Elliot figured it was mostly a buffer thing. He didn’t expect Eli to voluntarily choose to spend time with her.
Olivia looks equally shocked when Elliot lets her know the next day. He peers closely at her face the whole time, trying to figure out whether she’s regretting it enough to try to cancel, but she doesn’t seem too freaked out.
“I didn’t expect that,” she admits, taking another sip of red as she leans back against the kitchen counter. Noah’s at a friend’s house for the night; Elliot cooked the aglio e olio she made fun of him for and only teased a little bit when she cleared her entire plate.
He shrugs.
“I told him it was Easter here or Easter service at the church,” he admits, and Olivia snorts out a laugh.
“Well, that explains it,” she says. Elliot grins at her, pleased beyond measure. “I guess the Easter Bunny will be putting in overtime this year.”
“Surprised Noah’s still going along with it,” Elliot admits, and Olivia scowls.
“Don’t jinx it,” she mutters. “I told him if he’s too old for the Easter Bunny, he’s too old for chocolate, and so far it’s working.”
Elliot chuckles.
“Let me know what Eli likes, okay?” she continues, before immediately pausing and shaking her head. “You know what, nevermind. I’ll call Kathleen.”
“Ouch.”
She raises an eyebrow at him over her wineglass, infuriating and irresistible all at once. Some things never change, Elliot thinks, barely giving her time to set the glass down on the counter before he’s muscling in close to kiss her, swallowing down her sound of surprise.
Other things he wasn’t allowed to know, before: how her hips feel under his hands (soft, just the right amount of give). How the inside of her mouth tastes (sour, from the wine). The sound of her gasp when his mouth drags down the side of her throat (sweet, impossibly sweet).
He’s keeping track of it all.
5.
She saves fortune cookie messages.
Elliot finds one in her wallet by accident, pulls it out when she hands it to him to get her credit card out at the drive-thru. He waits until they’ve got the food settled to open it, staring at the message in mild bemusement.
Wealth awaits you very soon.
Elliot raises one eyebrow.
“You thinkin’ about buying a lottery ticket?”
Olivia glances over at him, mouth dropping open when she realizes what he’s holding. She doesn’t blush easily, has a complexion that hides it better than him, but he bets if he cupped her cheek in his palm it’d be warm.
“Obviously not,” she says, clearing her throat, aiming for casual as she flicks her indicator to pull back out onto the road.
“It’s in your wallet,” Elliot points out. She rolls her eyes, as though he’s just said something unreasonable.
“It’s — ” she coughs uncomfortably, pretending to be deeply focused on the road in front of her, like it isn’t well past midnight on a Tuesday. Like they didn’t just stop at Wendy’s because it was the only place open, Olivia complaining right up until the drive-thru speaker crackled to life and she switched smoothly into Phone Voice, the exact same way she does when she picks up a call at work. “I saved it.”
“I can see that,” Elliot says, waving it a little for emphasis.
“God, would you just — ” Olivia huffs out a breath. She’s chewing determinedly at the inside of her cheek, now, hard enough that it looks like it hurts. “It’s from that day, okay? When we got Chinese delivered.”
“That — ” Elliot falls silent as he remembers. Telling her he wanted to bottle the memory, the funny little look she’d given him in response. He’d thought she thought he was being ridiculous. He hadn’t thought she — “You always save these?”
Olivia shrugs.
“Not always,” she says, in a tone that pretty clearly communicates that by not always she means pretty often. “I lost a lot of them,” she continues, eyes back on the road. “When he — when I moved apartments. But I’ve kept a couple since then.”
“I never noticed,” Elliot says, a hint of wonder in his voice. All those years together and he never once noticed. He didn’t even think she liked fortune cookies — she’d crack them open days later when she needed a snack, sometimes. She never really made a big deal out of reading the paper inside, never asked to read the message on his.
It’s thrilling, that there’s so much left of her for him to figure out.
“It’s really not a big deal,” she insists, still not looking at him. “Just — when I want to remember it later.”
“Yeah?”
She looks over at him, finally. When their eyes meet it’s only for a split-second, but it’s enough. Elliot knows she can see it as he slides the fortune back into her wallet, closing it neatly. He wants to kiss her so badly it’s hard to think straight.
The corner of Olivia’s mouth pulls into a tiny smile, like maybe she can tell.
“Want me to pull over, let you drive?”
“Want you to let me do something, that’s for sure.”
She grins and reaches for his hand, gets his thumb instead and squeezes. Glances into the rearview and flicks on her indicator.
Lets him kiss her on the side of the road, seatbelt digging into his neck, both of them tasting like Diet Coke.
Lets him drive her the rest of the way home.