Chapter Text
Olivia Benson is a mystery.
They’ve been partners for almost a year now and he likes her. Eager to learn, good with the victims.
(Gun to his head, maybe a little too invested, but better that than emotionally detached.)
She’s prone to asking for forgiveness rather than permission, and she can get defensive when he questions her actions, but her instincts are solid and she’s got his back. He’d run off a few partners before her (Kathy said it was because he’s a grumpy old sonofabitch), but she seems to be sticking around. Maybe even finds him endearing.
Tolerates him, at least.
Olivia Benson is a mystery, and he likes her, but she’s proven to be a minefield. She dodges questions about her family and what she likes to do in her free time, and he can’t seem to get her coffee order right. She’s always doctoring it up with her back to him, or grabbing two stale cups while he waits in the car, so he’s never had a front row seat. He’s tried bodega coffee and more expensive brews, full fat dairy and soy, french vanilla creamer, half and half, even brought her a thermos from home for one of their late night stakeouts, but each attempt has barely been touched.
He’s decided to try again today, stopping at an upscale cafe in Flatiron on his way back to the 1-6. Something Columbian with 2% and a single pack of Splenda. She takes the coffee from him but doesn’t even bother lifting the lid. It sits on the desk in front of her while he tells her all about being flashed in court and the jury’s record conviction. He keeps waiting for her to tear back the perforated top and blow on it, but she ignores it completely, instead taking a sip of lukewarm coffee from the mug she’s been nursing since 8am.
What the hell is he missing?
They’re called into Cragen’s office to examine a shitty fake ID and he forgets about the coffee as they throw ideas around, make the trek out to Rikers to interview a dead man, then a diner in midtown where they don’t even have time to sit and grab lunch. He watches wistfully as a waitress carrying a club sandwich scurries past him, yelling back at the cook in Spanish. He has no idea what she’s saying, but Olivia stifles a laugh as they maneuver around the couple waiting at the hostess stand.
It isn’t until they’re back at the station, hunched over their desks, that he remembers the cup.
“Want me to reheat that?” he asks, getting up to throw his own mug in the microwave.
Olivia winces, but she shakes her head. “I think I’ve had enough caffeine today. Thanks, though.”
Only 20 minutes later, she’s drinking out of that stupid mug again, the dark blue diner mug with a massive crack down the side and faded NYPD emblem on the front. With a strangled sigh, he drops his pen and steeples his fingers, waiting until she finally senses the shift in the air.
It doesn’t take very long at all. She looks up from Stefan Tanzic’s file, eyebrow raised.
“What’s up?”
“You tell me.”
He glances at the abandoned coffee, still full from when it was poured this morning, and when he meets her eyes again, she’s quick to look away.
“I know you drink coffee, so you wanna tell me why you won’t drink the ones from me?”
Her lips are a thin line now, but he thinks he can see the corners pulling up ever-so-slightly, like she’s trying hard not to smile. And that annoys him almost more than the issue at hand.
“You think I’m tryin’ to poison you or something?”
At that, she does crack a smile, reaching for the drink and pulling off the lid. The seams of the cup are brown now, from coffee that’s been soaking through the paper all day. They both stare down at it, and that’s when she finally admits, “You never asked how I like it.”
“Sure I did,” he says, even as he wracks his brain for the moment he asked said question (and can’t find it).
“You didn’t,” she assures him. Pointing at the contents of her now-cold coffee, she explains that the color’s all wrong, and that he always forgets a crucial step in her process. “Two sugars, splash of hazelnut creamer.” The amount that would fit in the plastic top of a gallon of milk, and it has to be real sugar, not Splenda or that fake shit that comes in weird colored packets.
The next morning, he stops at the bodega around the corner from her place and picks up two coffees and a bottle of Coffee Mate, careful to follow her instructions to a T. When she slides into the front seat of the sedan, already stifling a yawn, he passes it over without comment. For a second, he thinks she’s just going to hold it until she can discreetly dump it in the trash at the precinct, but then she spots the creamer rolling around near her feet. He keeps his eyes forward, lips curled around the rim of his own cup, as she now examines the contents of her own. In his peripheral, he can see her bring the coffee up, hears the contented sigh as she takes a sip. It sends a rush of pride coursing through him, which he knows is stupid, but for someone who’s given up so little of herself, he’ll take this small victory.
“Morning, partner.”
She turns to him with a smile. “Morning.”