Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Most kids wouldn’t be the first ones to root for their parents to break up. 

She feels bad for wanting it, but Kathleen knows that her parents have been walking the fine line of divorce for years. Sees clearly that her parents don’t work as a couple anymore, and they haven’t for a long time. She knows that if they keep staying with each other and keep ignoring the big issues that have eroded their marriage since their first separation, that there will be a point where her siblings will have to pick and choose a side. No amicability or peace between the two. And she really doesn’t want it to come to that. 

She wishes more than anything, of course, that her mom and dad could be happy together. It’s what every kid wants for their parents. But sometimes a break up might be less damaging than preserving something that doesn’t work anymore. It's better for everyone in the long run, especially when there are children involved.

At least that’s what Kathleen believes.

She understands deep down that they are both better off separated, seeking happiness elsewhere instead of forcing it for the sake of the family. She knew it was inevitable, her parents’ end.

So Kathleen Stabler would say that she saw it coming a mile away. She was waiting for it for longer than she ever expected to, really. But she did not know that this was how it all came to an end. With the slamming of Eli’s door, hard enough into the frame that the sound echoes into every inch of the loft, leaving a foreboding silence. Lizzie’s laptop locked in her tight embrace as she looks down at the table, guilt-ridden, her eyes watery.

The rest of their family wait—some sitting, Elliot standing behind Lizzie, unsure of what to do or say. All eyes on a frozen Kathy Stabler. Her mouth opens and closes with no sound leaving her, hands closing into tight fists beside her, but otherwise utterly still. Until—

“Tell me it’s not true, Kathy.”

The room is quiet. Outside there’s a soft breeze. December is biting and cold, the wind rustles the few, un-snowed trees. The hard leaves fall, drifting and dragging across the damp pavement. Some of Bernie’s potted plants tap at the large, open windows with every soft rush of wind. A siren creeps closer to their street then fades into the distance. As everyone holds their breath, the city breathes life outside, louder than ever. 

“Elliot…” 

“Tell me that it’s wrong. That you didn’t lie to me all these years—”

“Elliot, please. Eli’s upset. Can we—”

“—Tell me that you didn’t lie to my face that day when you said—”

“I-I didn’t. Not really. You are his father, Elliot.”

“You’re damn right I’m his father,” his words biting. Harsh and filled with barely masked hurt. “I raised him, I was there for his birth, his nightmares, his bedtimes, his soccer games, all of it. He is my son! But tell me the fucking truth, Kathy. Is he mine?”  

The silence feels never-ending. More taps on the window. A faint whistle from a slightly cracked window. Then, a shaky inhale followed by a long, loud exhale. Kathleen's stomach twists as she sees her mother close her eyes, a tear falling down the pale skin of her cheek, and answers quietly, “No.” 

No, she definitely did not see this coming. Not like this.

Chapter Text

A few hours earlier…

The loft reflected the early days when Lizzie and Dickie were barely reaching above the stove—how chaotic that time had been—when Santa was real, game nights happened weekly, and everything felt warm and exciting. When, no matter how rowdy and overwhelming it could become, it still felt like home. Kathleen and Maureen, being teenagers, were still able to begrudgingly enjoy spending time with their parents and annoyingly hyper twin siblings. 

Only this time around, the hyperactive twins are Kieran and Seamus, running all around the kitchen, one chasing after the other ("Seamus! Give it back!”) until their mother yells at them to come back to the table.

The younger kids have all grown into their adult roles as parents, or grad students, or social workers and first responders. But even with the busyness of their lives, they’re all here now, acting like kids again, arguing over the smallest, dumbest things like siblings do, and celebrating their little brother Eli. Lizzie could feel the radiating happiness from her dad, looking around, happy that the family has evolved with such lightness and love despite so much…drama. 

She was home last weekend, tiredly shuffling through the latest interviews and research data that she had compiled over the past few weeks for her thesis when her phone started blowing up with messages in her family group chat. She reads the texts in glances as they flash on the corner of her computer screen, not wanting to disrupt her work flow.

full(er) house

Mom: Eli is officially on winter break for the next two weeks. Dad and I were thinking of having everyone come over for his 19th some time this weekend. Can everyone make it (or try to at least)?

Katie liked “Eli is officially on winter break for…”

Eli liked “Eli is officially on winter break for…”

Maureen: Count us in! What time were you guys thinking?

Mom: We were thinking of doing dinner (birthday boy’s choice, of course) around 6 at our place. No specific ‘end time’ unless Katie and Rich start fighting over Scrabble again and ruin the fun…

Eli: god. why would you bring that up again mom

Dickie: No need for fighting. I was right as always. Katie was just mad she lost.

Katie: I’m sorry but ‘Zaddy’ is not in the official Scrabble dictionary and therefore not a valid word!!!! It shouldn’t have counted.

Dickie: It’s absolutely a valid word. I know because I (unfortunately) heard some kid at Eli’s old high school call Dad that…which is when I GOOGLED IT and learned that it is in fact a real and true word. 

Also, I’ll definitely be able to make it, Mom.

Katie disliked “It’s absolutely a valid word…”

Mom disliked “It’s absolutely a valid word…”

Maureen disliked “It’s absolutely a valid word…”

Eli: ew what

Dad: Excuse me? What the hell is a ‘Zaddy?’

Katie replied to “It’s absolutely a valid word…”

It is a slang word. NOT a Scrabble word. There is a difference Dick.

Carl replied to “We were thinking of doing…”

Sounds great Kathy. Mo, honey, I’ll bring the boys over with me after my shift since they’ll be with my parents.

Maureen: Ok! Mom, should I bring anything?

Mom: Elliot, do you really want to know if it came from a teenage girl’s mouth?

No, sweetie, I think we have everything covered. Dad and I will handle everything. 

Dickie: Who says it came from a girl? 🤣

Maureen laughed at “Who says it came from…”

Katie laughed at “Who says it came from…”

Carl laughed at “Who says it came from…”

Eli laughed at “Who says it came from…”

Lizzie huffs out a laugh, grabbing her phone to finally engage with her family and take a break from the endless numbers and letters that blurred her vision.

Lizzie: Of course Dad of all people would attract the younger audience of both men and women. He's a hunk. Remember when Dad got hit on by that kid David’s recently divorced dad?

Speaking of gay attention, is it cool if I bring Simone along to the party Eli?

Dad: He wasn’t hitting on me! He just randomly asked about my gym routine and invited me to go with him some time. But I said I couldn’t because I don’t have a steady routine, you know, with work. 

Eli: LMFAOOOOO dad…that is not a normal straight man interaction i fear.

yes lizzie please do. can you actually ask simone to bring those cookies that she made for your birthday plz plz plz

Katie: Yeah, Dad. I am pretty sure he was hitting on you.

Dad: Well, now that I have said it…I guess that could be him asking me out. He also did ask to exchange numbers so he could ask about gym tips... 

Dickie laughed at “Well, now that I have said…”

Mom: Bold of him. Didn’t he see your wedding ring?? Although hearing about how that divorce went down, he wouldn’t have been scared off by a married man…

Maureen: Ooh…Mom knows the drama? Please share with the class.

Having confirmed her attendance with her girlfriend (and after sending a separate message to said girlfriend about her little brother’s request for her to-die-for cookies), Lizzie focuses on her laptop again, hoping to get back into the groove of things even though her phone is still buzzing with messages of old gossip. But she was torn away from it again as she peeked at one text interrupting the rest of the chatter.

Eli: hey dad can you ask olivia to come and to bring noah with her plz??

feeling the intense urge to kick his ass at mario kart

Lizzie notices that there was a brief pause in the communication after that was sent. Not so lengthy that she could describe the group chat as suddenly going silent, but long enough that she could sense an awkwardness. Like someone wants to respond but doesn’t know how to, or rather wants to avoid it but that might mean even more awkwardness.

She quickly switches to her individual messages with Kathleen and texts her ‘Mom is going to freak isn’t she?’ Her sister just replies with a shrug emoji, then, 'She needs to chill out, honestly. We all know that Liv is not the enemy Mom makes her out to be. Plus the Noah and Eli bonding is so adorable.’

Lizzie smiles. It honestly is really cute.

Going back to her group chat, she sees the conversation slowly come to an end.

Dad: Sure, son. I’ll let her know.

Katie: Actually, I can probably ask her myself, Eli. I am seeing her later today.

Lizzie: Omg! Say hi to Livvie for me Katie!!

Dad: You are? For what?

Katie: Mostly work stuff. But also we are trying this new coffee spot that one of her detectives recommended, too. So it’s also my fun date with her.

Lizzie texts Katie separately again. ‘You’re going to make him jealous, Katie.’ 

Katie responds ‘LOL. Shut up!’

Mom: Ok, just confirming for a headcount: Me, Eli, Dad, Katie, Mo, Carl, your grandma Bernie, Dickie, Lizzie and Simone. Let me know if Noah will be coming with his mom.

Katie: K. Can’t wait to see everyone!

Lizzie raises her eyebrows. She is taken aback by her mother’s blatant avoidance of Olivia’s name. Her mom was always kind of weird with Olivia. Like she wanted to be friends with her husband’s partner, but was also hesitant to extend past the boundary into a solid friendship, preserving the idea that she should solely be her “husband’s co-worker.” Maybe she was slightly put off by her beauty (though her dad has had his fair share of beautiful, blonde partners), her mysterious lack of a family or…anyone in her life, really, and all the ways in which she is part of the darker side of her husband’s job. 

Lizzie could see how her mom might perceive Olivia as a “threat” on the surface, but just knowing Olivia Benson, it is hard for her to be critical in any regard against the woman who was the closest to being a second mom to her growing up. She might not have been there all the time, but Livvie was there when it truly mattered, whenever their family needed her, or needed her dad to get his head on straight, and that made her family in Lizzie's eyes. A ten-year gap didn't change that.

If anything, her falling right back in even a decade later to help them during the most terrifying moment of their lives just solidified that bond with her more. She only wishes she could've better shown her appreciation for Olivia being there, especially when she could have easily distanced herself. She wouldn't have blamed her if she did. Lizzie is still baffled at how her dad was able to do that to his partner.

Plus, with all of the shit that happened when her parents came back to New York, Lizzie is bewildered that her parents are still together. Even more so by the fact that while they are not necessarily happy or content, they are also not fighting like they used to. Their marriage is just completely...routine at this point. Quiet. Dull. She has even expressed similar sentiments with some of her siblings, but only Kathleen (and Eli sort of) agrees with her that they both should just stop the charade, move on separately but remain family, see other people.

"Other people" being the woman her dad said "I love you" to during his intervention.

Lizzie calls her girlfriend before fully diving into her work, expressing her excitement that her whole family is going to be together for this party.

Most of them knew it would be one of the few occasions that the whole Stabler family (plus Olivia, Noah, and Lizzie’s girlfriend, Simone) would be able to make an appearance, with all of their busy work/family lives preventing them from seeing each other at most family gatherings or holiday celebrations. So it makes sense to Lizzie that they all wanted to make an effort to show up for their youngest brother.

Maureen—having prided herself in hosting and decorating her own baby shower years ago despite her husband’s attempts to have her ease up and let him handle it—decorated the loft with streamers and balloons, all blue and white, covering practically every inch of the apartment. Her husband brought with him their rowdy boys after his long shift. With the help of Simone and Dickie (“Richard” at his annoying insistence), they picked up the Thai food Eli had requested for the evening, the cake, and prepped the dinner table for everyone’s arrival. 

Kathleen and Bernie were sitting outside in the backyard as the rest of them set up, tending to Bernie’s garden while Eli sat and kept them company, catching up with them about his college life and Kathleen’s social work. Her dad, despite having been at OCCB headquarters since late last night, was out getting wine with her mom. A knock sounds from the door, forcing Lizzie to pause her unpacking of the warm food, and let in the final guests: Olivia, with her curly-haired son in tow.

Lizzie glances at Eli and Noah greeting each other with a fist bump, the both of them closer than any of them would have predicted. Laughter and banter floods the room as they sit and eat together. A seemingly joyful gathering of a picture-perfect family if one were to look in from the outside.

“Listen to me right now. I was up all night yesterday writing my thesis AND grading the most horrendous papers for this psych class I'm TA-ing right now. I deserve the last damn spring roll,” Lizzie dramatically exclaims as she attempts to grab at the appetizer with an old stowed-away pair of chopsticks.

She sits in between Kathleen and her girlfriend. Next to Simone, on her right, is Noah, then Olivia, with Elliot at the head of one end of the table. Across from Olivia sits Kathy, with Eli, Bernie, Dickie, and Carl to the right of her. At the other end of the table sits Maureen with her two boys flanked on either side of her.

“We get it. You’re all smart and academic and shit. But nobody forced you to do that, Liz. Plus I’m the one who got the food for all of us, so really I deserve it,” argued Dickie, blocking her advances with his own fork.

“Simone and I went with you, dipshit—”

“Hey watch it with the language, please. Young ears around us,” says Maureen. She is slowly finishing her plate while trying to keep her fidgety twins seated while they eat.

“And who did all the heavy lifting?” Dickie argues.

“Well, actually you had Carl take the Thai food and told Eli to carry his own cake to the fridge—” Lizzie enunciates her words, slowly and dramatically increasing volume with every accusation like Dickie committed the worst crimes imaginable.

“I had to take a piss! We waited for like an hour for the food.”

“And I am pretty sure we were the ones who made the order and paid for it too,” Lizzie continues.

“Didn’t Dad pay for the food?” Kathleen interjects, highly amused at the older twins’ argument and wanting to stir up more drama. Lizzie peeks at her father, him nodding in the affirmative and his mouth full of Pad See Ew as he shifts in his spot at the end of the table opposite to Maureen. She senses he is only half-listening and slightly amused by the argument around him, so used to all of their antics. And she sees her mother just smile and shake her head, adoring her aged kids like time never passed at all.

“He gave us the cash, but we did the actual payment.”

Dickie scoffs, “Yeah, like that’s hard work. I know you were being very brave having a public conversation where you had to speak at a normal human volume, Liz, but that’s not exactly hard for anyone else.”

Lizzie whips her foot forward in a flash, kicking her twin’s shin with a frown on her face.

“Stop being a dick, Dickie.”

“It’s Richard, you ass.”

“Alright, alright. Enough. C’mon, we have guests here. Everyone put their weapons down…” says Elliot, though he knows the bickering will only pick up again. He gives a quick side glance to Olivia and her son, offering her a slight grimace in apology at the kids’ antics that he mostly feels obligated to direct towards the younger Benson, but she just gives him a small smile, shaking her head as she chews. Dickie and Lizzie meanwhile glare at each other from across the table, holding their utensils in the air threateningly until they relent, both continuing to eat the food already on their plate. Elliot finishes, “...besides, Eli should get it since it’s his birthday.” 

A synchronized groan resounds from the pair of older twins (“Whatever! It’s not even his actual BIRTH day!”) with half grumbles and protestations from Kathleen and Carl who were hoping to grab it in the midst of their argument.

Eli, gleeful at having “won” without participating in his siblings’ playful argument, fits the entire spring roll in his mouth. He chews and moans dramatically like a man starving for days. 

“God, gross Eli! Nobody needs to hear your sex noises, you fiend!” Lizzie exclaims with disgust on her face.

“Sex!” 

A loud exclamation erupts from the tiny voices of Kieran and Seamus, both with grins on their faces. They burst into giggles when they look at their wide-eyed, horrified mother. The giggles turn into full blown laughter when they repeat it over and over, causing Lizzie and Kathleen to snort and fold their lips into their mouths to prevent more giggles from spilling out while Dickie just cackles loudly. 

“Man, Eli. I pity your girlfriend just based on those noises,” Dickie says before he takes a sip of his beer, the bottle barely covering the widening, smug grin on his face.

“Girlfriend? What girlfriend?” Kathy says.

Eli chokes on his spring roll and hurries to drink water, making the rest of them laugh even harder. Lizzie hears Noah’s little giggle. Eli looks at him with an overdramatic look of betrayal as Kathy pats him on the back before breaking out into a grin, shaking his head at his mom in denial. They really are adorable, Lizzie thinks.

The others all quiet down, softly shaking their heads and rolling their eyes in exasperation once another silly squabble unfolds with a different pair of siblings.

The hum of conversation around him and occasional peak of loud banter has never felt more right to Elliot.

“I am going to get some wine. Does anyone else want any?” asks Kathy as she stands with a glass in hand, heading towards the kitchen.

“I think we just finished the last of the red, Kath. We got only one bottle today and the two whites,” says Elliot.

“I actually brought some wine,” states Olivia. She rushes to wipe her mouth with a napkin and scoots her chair back to follow Kathy into the kitchen. “Two bottles, actually. I’ll help you, Kathy.” She turns her head back to the table, “Please, you all, drink some. I have enough at my house right now. Fin keeps gifting me bottles from Phoebe’s parents, but I have enough to bring several for next time.” 

Glancing into the kitchen, Elliot locks onto Olivia’s figure, bouncing around to each wooden cabinet, easily finding the wine glasses for the rest of the adults and helping his wife open the different options of wine Olivia brought with her. 

Next time.  

Elliot smiles privately to himself. The words wrap around his body, filling him with enough warmth and hope he thinks he might not need another bite of food.

He has been working towards improving his relationship with Olivia, hoping that it could become more than just the polite “friendship” that they are living in now because of his and his wife’s dramatic return and Olivia’s fortified wall that has only become stronger after a decade. He understands why she is so hesitant to let him in and often thinks that they would be in a better place now had circumstances been different. 

He was just as shocked as her when his wife woke up from her coma. 

The Wheatley drama is officially of the past with the dramatic conclusion of Angela Wheatley driving her and her deranged husband off a cliff. But it all still lingers in the family’s heads, an unrelenting ache that cannot be soothed—Kathy Stabler a physical reminder of how truly awful that time of their lives had been even though they survived through it. 

Elliot is still plagued by nightmares of the explosion. The images burn into his head in his worst moments of panic, as if the flames of the car scorched him too. His mind often overwhelms him with the sensations of the bomb; the noises, the smells, the searing heat as he tries to reach for his wife’s crumpled body. He remembers the awful sounds more than anything. How the blow reverberated into the street, penetrating his eardrums. Remembered Kathy’s whines of pain and the echo of his screams for help. Remembered the sirens as help finally arrived after what felt like hours.

Most of the aftermath was a blur for Elliot. He knows his wife was taken to the hospital. Remembers the whirlwind of emotions he felt as he saw his partner after ten long years. Knows that he threw himself into work, a newfound determination to bring his wife’s attackers to justice fueled by his rage. Knows his wife was touch and go until suddenly he came back to an empty room, his heartbeat sounding in his ears, his mouth filling with the telltale feeling of nausea as he stands confused, unbelieving. And then a doctor was approaching him with caution, like stepping closer to a wild animal, a ticking bomb, a look of pity on her face as she speaks to him, though he only picks up on some of it.

“...move her into the ICU…body needs time…just waiting…call your family…I’m sorry…”

And then Kathy Stabler was in a coma, leaving Elliot and his family in a seemingly never ending state of hope and sorrow for weeks, months.

While he knew his wife’s death might have caused his family so much pain, this was almost a worse outcome. His kids would avoid a funeral, but they would suffer with the weekly sight of their mother connected to tubes and machines, silent and still. Being alive but not really. 

A routine had developed for a while. Each of his kids would frequently rotate their visits with Kathy (as much as COVID restrictions would allow), some coming alone or with each other, bringing food, reading, or chatting alongside their mother, strongly hoping that maintaining some semblance of normalcy would keep her alive, bring her back to them. 

Elliot remembers spiraling in his grief, becoming fidgety and unstable with PTSD. The family (with Olivia’s help) tried to reach him with their misguided but well-intentioned intervention, though this would only cause more of a divide between him and his family with his shocking—to some of the family, at least—declaration of I love you. 

Elliot would visit her less often, coming around only when his head was at its worst. The room would be quiet except for the occasional sniffle as he silently cried, with his head resting on her body, grip tight on her left hand, stroking her wedding band, praying to God that she would wake up. As the weeks passed, every visit would become shorter and shorter. He became more focused on his work, hunting down the Wheatley family despite his overwhelming grief and trauma. Avoidance and repression being Elliot Stabler’s only understanding of survival. 

The Wheatley trial was excruciatingly slow for the family, the hope that their mother might wake up soon would dwindle with each painful reminder of her attack, displayed as evidence in the courtroom. The only way for them to seek some sort of closure was for Richard Wheatley to be sent to prison. 

But life can be cruel and unrelenting. The mistrial proved that. And Richard Wheatley walked away a free man.

Scraping against the floor snaps Elliot back to the present, seeing Kathy and Olivia take their seats again, but his gaze is set on his youngest son. 

Elliot catches his eye once Eli finishes telling Noah the highlights from his last soccer game. 

“You’re staring, Dad.”

A lazy smile appears on his face, “I’m glad you’re here, is all,” he says with a shrug.

Eli smiles, “Could’ve easily missed me because a friend of mine wanted to do something for me back over there. You know. Full keg…strippers. Whole shebang.”

“Ah,” Elliot says, nodding his head, playing along with it. “So much more classy than this, huh?”

Eli snorts. “Oh definitely. But you know,” he lets out a big, dramatic sigh, “figured I’d grace the family with my presence since I am so far away.”

Elliot raises an eyebrow. “Don’t act like you’re doing us a favor.”

“I am doing you a favor. Well…I’m doing Mom a favor. The rest of you are just…collateral kindness.”

Elliot chuckles, but then his gaze lingers again, softer now. “Still glad you’re here.”

Eli meets his father’s eyes, the playfulness fading just enough to let something gentler settle between them. “Yeah. Me too.” And Elliot knows his son means that.

He swallows a big gulp of his newly refilled wine, feeling it bitterly go down his throat as it tightens with restrained emotion. He had many regrets about how he acted (or didn’t act) when Kathy was…asleep. Tried to make up for it every time he worked, hugged his children, and with every trip to his church, but his biggest regret was not providing enough stability and support for Eli. He hated to see his son in so much pain. 

His mind resumes racing, thinking of how quickly his son’s life changed for the worse.

As his anger and heartbreak kept growing, Eli started to worry his family with his constant snapping and pill-stealing habit. His behavior turned more irritable and his visits with his mother more frequent. 

It all comes to a head when he runs away to New Jersey, scaring the shit out of Elliot, especially when his son ends up on a ledge by the George Washington bridge and becomes a murder suspect all in the same goddamn day.

After so much stress, and with Olivia’s support and his team’s help, Eli is quickly acquitted. The psych eval he had taken in the midst of the investigation revealed how much pain and anxiety was overwhelming him, how lost he was, every action a cry for help, and Elliot was finally able to understand how much his son was hurting. Enraged by the discovery that his son was now caught in the crossfire of the Wheatley family’s vendetta against him, Elliot felt an even stronger desire to protect his family, to banish the Wheatleys from their lives forever. 

And his anti-Wheatley (well, anti-Richard Wheatley more than anything) convictions would later work in his favor once he is forced to work alongside Richard—who unbelievably becomes an FBI consultant—as they battle against New York cyber-crimes and his suspicions are proven right when Richard’s greed and resentment towards Elliot makes him a threat once again. And in a swarm of dramatic demands, hostage situations, a trail of casualties, and getaway cars that crash and burn, the Wheatleys were finally defeated.

Life can be cruel and unrelenting. But it can also be merciful. The first movement of Kathy Stabler’s hand proved that. And she woke up to the ecstatic, crying faces of her beautiful family.

Elliot looks at Kathy across the table from him, eating and happily chatting with Eli next to her, affectionately pushing his hair back. All of his thoughts of the past are fleeting in his mind, leaving him a touch crestfallen. 

Don’t get him wrong, he is grateful that his children get to have such a great, long-lasting relationship with their mother. Especially grateful that they don’t have to suffer from the devastating loss of losing a parent so young (particularly in Eli’s case) and in a traumatic way. And he is eternally thankful that his wife didn't suffer such an awful death; she didn't deserve that, she didn't deserve her own life being destroyed by his job, by him. 

But Elliot feels the familiar weight of his unhappiness, heavy and crushing and choking. Heavy like the weight of a promise, a vow he made when he was just a kid before he knew all that it would cost him. He loves his family and his life, but he recognizes that there were parts of himself that he had to sacrifice for their sake. And he felt the same kind of ache once he fell into the comfort of routine again with his wife. 

After her miraculous revival, Kathy and Elliot easily fell into their husband and wife dynamic. He supported her rehabilitation, helped her readjust to the real world again. Kathy would struggle the most with having missed a significant time in her family’s lives, unintentionally causing so much pain. It only made her become more invested in their lives as a mother, making up for lost time. Elliot helped her with that, too.

He knows there is still love between them—their marriage wouldn't have lasted as long as it did if the love wasn't there, holding them by a thread—but it's all changed now, a different kind of love bred from their time together in Italy. But as much as they both wanted to have a proper conversation about their future, they both felt like their family needed a sense of stability. And so they left so many things unsaid. Nothing about their fights in Italy, leading up to their return to New York. Nothing about Elliot’s silent grief for his partner, for his wife once she got hurt, or how he tried to cope with the “loss” of her (and her). Nothing about Kathy’s insecurities and suspicions, heightened more than ever now that Olivia is a part of their lives again.

Just stuck in a bubble of domestic bliss. But they weren’t fooling anybody.

“Earth to Dad. Tune in, please. You need to settle this once and for all since Mom refuses to answer,” Eli says, snapping his fingers around Elliot’s face. “Which one of us was the most difficult to parent?”

Elliot scoffs and shakes his head, “Which one of you wasn't is the real question…” he murmurs, just loud enough for the others to hear, but he shares a look with Kathy and they both exchange knowing smiles. Olivia softly laughs as she lifts her glass of wine to her lips.

The table becomes overwhelmed with overlapping voices as the siblings argue.

“Here he goes...” Kathleen starts with a roll of her eyes.

“We all know Dickie was the worst—” Eli bursts in exclamation.

“If it’s a question of who wasn’t difficult, my money is on Lizzie,” Maureen says sweetly, winking at her sister.

“Hey! When did this become the hate-on-Richard party? I was an angel compared to Katie—” Dickie continues with exasperation.

“Richard, you leave Katie alone,” Bernie softly interjects, always the first to defend her sweet granddaughter who is just like her and definitely not her favorite.

“Aww, Maureen. I was going to say the same for you,” Lizzie says, her and Maureen having their own little conversation.

“Grandma B, she was arrested! Did everyone forget about that?” Dickie’s voice raises above the others.

“Oh shut up, Dickie. And ‘angel’ is a stretch, don’t you think? Didn’t you run away? Does ‘assault’ ring any bells for you? I agree with Eli. You were the worst.” Kathleen points at him with a half-serious look on her face. Dickie drops his mouth and flounders a bit, moving his head around to look over at his parents like he’s saying Do you see how she’s talking about me?

Elliot just shrugs along with Kathy, both matching fake-innocent looks on their faces, not wanting to get involved with even a single word. But quietly to each other, they tease in amusement about their fully grown-up kids reverting to whiny children whenever they fight.

“Kathleen was arrested?” Noah whispers across the table to Eli, but the surrounding adults hear him anyway despite the rowdiness of the rest of the table.

Eli replies in a whisper, “Twice.” Noah’s eyes widen in disbelief at the new information. Elliot suspects he never would have guessed Katie was problematic as a kid, since all he experiences now is her kind and sweet energy towards him. “The family lore is crazy,” he continues, "I'll tell you about it later.” Noah giggles.

Elliot and Olivia briefly lock eyes, the small moment between the boys fading but he shares a private smile with her over their boys’ demonstration of their recent camaraderie. Kathy turns her head away after seeing their mutual expressions and catching Elliot’s eyes right after. She grabs her wine glass, takes a sip. Elliot swallows, shaking his head, the smile faded into a frown, feeling caught.

“Thank you for defending my honor, Katie,” Eli holds his hand to his heart in a mocking gesture of gratitude, a smug look directed at Dickie.

Kathleen nods at Eli and continues, “And I also agree that Lizzie was probably the easiest.”

“Me too,” pipes up Simone. "I bet she was a perfect angel." She winks at her blushing girlfriend. Elliot grins at his daughter.

“Honestly, I feel like Maureen is the most sane of all of us now, so she should win the easiest sibling award,” Eli says, giving his oldest sister a genuine, shy smile. 

“What is this stroke fest right now?” Dickie points at Eli, “Kiss-ass,” then Kathleen, “Bullshit, you didn’t share a room with her,” and finally to Simone, “You are just trying to get laid,” which makes most of the family snap at him again in warning about his language. “Eli literally came into the world in the most difficult way possible, so actually he wins…or loses I guess...” Eli starts bickering back and forth with Dickie after his comment.

At the mention of Eli’s birth, Elliot puts his head down, missing his wife sharing a significant look across the table with Olivia. Unknowing that both women are feeling conflicted; the look between them one of acknowledgment for living through that car accident together and also an underlying awkwardness as they both separately reflect on how significant that moment was to them for vastly different reasons. 

Olivia glances at him and that awkward air only increases as she catches him looking at her and not his wife. A flash of their shared embrace in that hospital hallway pulses in his mind before fading back into his memory. 

Elliot sees her look back down to break the contact between them, the conversation from the siblings switching as quickly as her movement away from him.

An hour into the celebration, everybody finishes their food for the most part. Olivia notices that the older kids (she can never really call them ‘adults’ despite them being well into their late 20s/30s, too used to seeing them as teens, as babies) have only become looser with every beer taken from the fridge and every wine refill. Her own glass was just filled, thanks to Kathleen, though she thinks she might have to start drinking some water since she can’t remember if this was her second (or third?) glass. 

As she looks at her freshly-poured wine, she feels taps on her arm. Her eyes drop to the sensation, then traces up to Elliot’s extended arm, offering her a water bottle that he must have grabbed along with his beer. Olivia catches his eyes, sees the silent question in his raised eyebrows and pointed gaze. Of course he just knows. She takes the bottle with a tight, but grateful smile, sensing the intensity of his wife’s eyes on them. 

“You read my mind.” 

He hums, “Just a good detective.” He smirks.

Olivia rolls her eyes lightheartedly as her hands work to twist the cap off the bottle. She turns to her other side, sees Lizzie has her phone out and decides to engage with her.

“You know Liz,” Olivia tilts her head back to look at the usually quiet-twin sister, “I think Simone mentioned earlier something about a project you’re doing, but it went way over my head. How is that going?” 

“Oh it’s um…it’s good. My research is about genetics,” Lizzie says, sliding her phone back into her pocket, feeling self-conscious now that someone’s attention is specifically on her, “like how illnesses can be passed down through shared DNA and stuff. It’s pretty boring if you don’t have any interest in it.”

“It sounds like important work. What made you interested in studying genetics?” Olivia kindly responds.

“Well, you already knew science was my favorite subject growing up,” Lizzie says with a small grin, Olivia’s sweet smile and nod back at her conveyed that she does know that particular fact about her. Olivia remembers once when Lizzie and Dickie, both eight years old, sat at their dad’s desk as he finished talking to his captain. Dickie showed off his newest toy car that he got from his favorite teacher and Lizzie shyly shared her latest school assignment, a mini-ecosystem in a jar, spewing facts about each feature of her little project, both basking in the full attention she was giving them. A memory that stuck with her since Lizzie told her when she was older that her full house often made her feel much smaller, her troublesome siblings taking the attention away from her at any given moment. But Olivia was always intently listening; in this moment, she kept asking her questions about the details of her creation to get her to talk more, speak louder. Lizzie expressed how Liv’s interests in her made her happy. No matter how small it seemed, it improved her confidence greatly. 

Lizzie continues, “but I had a friend who passed away right after I finished college from a genetic disease. She was very young, only a few years older than me at the time.” The mood shifts. Olivia hears the rest quieting their individual conversations as they listen. “We were pretty close, so she told me right away when she started feeling sicker than normal. Like frequently getting colds or finding it hard to breathe. It got especially worse during the COVID pandemic and then she was just…gone.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Olivia says softly, her eyes reflecting sympathy.

“The sad part was that her parents had genetic tests done for them and her, too, when she was little. And they knew that she was at risk since both of them had carrier genes. But they rolled the dice. Assumed she wouldn’t get sick. And they never told her the risks to ‘protect her,’ I guess. Didn’t want her to be afraid her whole life about an illness she only had a 25% chance of getting. But she died because of it…and way too soon.” Olivia sees Simone grasp Lizzie’s hand under the table, squeezing it in support. Lizzie smiles at her sadly, but squeezes back tightly.

Looking up at Olivia again, she clears her throat, continues, “It’s all good now, honestly. I miss her of course, but I do my best to honor her memory by doing my research, which focuses on situations like hers. I hope to help others like Lily by bringing more awareness to the importance of genetic tests and urging people to seek genetic counselors to know everything you possibly can about your own health, even if you are as young as 16. It’s even more of a big deal now, I think, because of all the at-home tests people do just to discover their heritage for fun and all that stuff.”

Olivia sees her parents look at Lizzie with pride. It’s probably nice to see their sweetest, quietest girl speak with confidence about herself, a feeling she rarely allows herself to express around most people. Sensing that their sister was ok, the other siblings resumed chatting back and forth on their side of the long table.

“Well, that’s very admirable, Lizzie. And I can see how passionate you are about it too. I know that your friend would have been proud of you,” Olivia says kindly. 

“That’s really cool, Lizzie,” Noah says quietly. Then, perking his head up and offering a genuine smile to her, he says, “You know, I used one of those at-home tests and it’s how I found out that I have a half-brother! Mom let me meet him this week.”

Olivia sweeps her hand affectionately over her boy’s curls, giving him a tight smile as he looks over to her. The water bottle ignored, she grabs her wine glass and swallows a big gulp of wine at the mention of Noah’s extended family, hoping the action goes unnoticed by those sitting closest to her, especially Elliot. 

“Why would you need a test for that?” Elliot asks. They are all aware that Noah is adopted, but they were under the impression that he had no existing biological family.

Noah scrunches his eyebrows together, “She didn’t know either. Right, mom? My only other family that we know of is my Grandma Sheila but—”

“You’re right, Noah. It was definitely a surprise, but we met them and the whole family was nice too, huh?” Olivia says quickly, interrupting Noah. She takes another swig of wine. Please, dear God, let Elliot ignore the mention of ‘Grandma Sheila.’ 

Eli, surprisingly, looks at her like he recognizes the name. Maybe her son remembers more about that situation than she had hoped and now Eli knows more than he should. She’ll have to talk to Noah about it.

“Yeah! I was nervous but they were really nice. And Connor has an Xbox with a ton of games on it and a big backyard so we spent some time outside—” 

As Noah kept going about his recent visit up in Woodstock, Olivia felt the slight knock of Elliot’s knee against her own. She looks up at the movement and catches his eyes. He scrunches his brows together in question, silently asking, You ok? before taking a sip of his drink, keeping eye contact with her the whole time until he puts it back down on the table. She responds with a slight nod of her head, I’m ok, before leaning her head against her right hand, paying attention to her son. Their knees are still touching with neither of them tempted to move.

She might still feel a bit of residual sadness and a million other complicated feelings about the McCanns’ sudden appearance. But she can’t deny how happy Noah seems to be, loves to see the radiant joy and excitement emanating from him as he shares details about his half-brother with the rest of the Stablers. 

“—And Mom made sure that it was safe too. She looked over the test with me and did a background check like three times even though I knew they would be nice,” Noah says in slight exasperation. 

“I just want you to be safe, sweetie. You know me and you know what I do for a living,” Olivia says pointedly at him, grabbing his cheek with her two knuckles as a sign of motherly affection, to which Noah tries to escape with an embarrassed “Moooom.”

Lizzie gasps suddenly, “You know what–oh my god, wait. That just reminded me!” 

She jumps up and rushes to her parents’ room where all of their bags were stowed away. She comes back carrying her laptop, sitting back down next to her girlfriend and opens it. 

“I got the labs back for our entire family’s genetic tests! I need to sort all the data tonight actually–oh jeez,” Lizzie lets out a big sigh, looking suddenly overwhelmed. “Thank you very much, parents and siblings and in-laws. Liv and Noah, I would love it if you guys participated too. I am doing a whole profile on the family as part of my research.”

Olivia gently smiles, though the implication of Lizzie casually throwing her and Noah into the category of 'family' makes her heart race a little faster.

“You didn’t tell me the entire family was involved, Lizzie,” Kathy says with a tone of uncertainty, though Olivia thinks only she notices the small shift. She tries to play it off though, adding with a tight smile, “I feel less special about being chosen.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. You were the first person I asked.” Lizzie winks at her.

“Sooo you want to reveal that I have an earth-shattering deadly illness or something? Right now? Nuh-uh. You keep that to yourself, Liz,” Dickie says, shaking his head.

“God, drama. You let me have your damn DNA in the first place. I just explained to Livvie how important it is to know this stuff but fine. For now we can look at everyone else’s. It’ll be fun! Any objections?”

“Ooooo wait. This test can tell you if you will pass down stuff to your kids too, right? I wanna know,” says a very interested Kathleen.

“Gasp, Kathleen,” Dickie starts with a look of mock astonishment on his face, “do you have something to share with the class? Another test result of your own, maybe?”

“Shut up, Dick. You don’t have to worry ‘cause no sane woman would want to have your kids,” Kathleen sharply counters with a roll of her eyes. She leans over to look at Lizzie’s computer as Eli and Maureen get up and stand behind Lizzie, interested in the results. Even Noah becomes interested, standing by Eli. 

Stiff and oddly quiet during this whole interaction is Kathy. Her eyes are practically burning into her own hand as she fidgets with the stem of her wine glass, tracing it with her fingers, loosening and tightening her grip around it, over and over. Olivia glances at Elliot to see if he senses the anxiety coming from his wife. 

He is not paying attention to her though. “Hey Mama, you finished? I think we should bring out the cake since most of us are done eating, but you should give Eli your gift first. Want me to bring it for you?” 

Elliot shifts as he starts to stand but Bernie responds, “Oh, yes! You sit, sit. I’ll go get his gift.”

“Well, I still need to get the cake–”

“I’ll get it, Elliot,” Kathy says, abruptly snapping out of her trance. She moves fast out of her seat, pushing down on Elliot’s shoulder to get him to sit, practically fleeing to the kitchen. 

Elliot freezes for a moment, “Ooo-kay. Everyone wants me to sit, I’ll sit.” He turns to his left. Olivia sees in her peripheral vision Elliot’s questioning gaze swinging towards her, probably wondering if she also senses that his wife is acting strange all of a sudden. But she can’t look at him. Instead, her eyes are set on Kathy’s retreating form, a calculating look on her face, then she glances down at the woman's wine glass. 

“So, what am I looking at Liz? It just looks like a bunch of random numbers and letters—Oh, wait! You did ancestry too? Let me see,” Kathleen says over Lizzie’s shoulder.

“Well, I pulled up each of our genetic profiles separately. I took a saliva sample from you guys, which were used in a genomic test where we look at all aspects of your DNA, and, yes, an ancestry analysis for fun mostly. Because we share the same parents, we could share similar genetic results. But the passing of certain genetic disorders or illnesses can differ based on sex and just overall DNA makeup. So I’d rather just look individually,” Lizzie opens several tabs on her computer, pulling up each result. 

“First we can look at Dad’s profile. His family history, according to Grandma B, mentions that our great-grandma died from breast cancer, so that might potentially come up on Dad’s results if it ends up being genetic, but most cases of breast cancer are not hereditary.” 

The younger twins, bursting with energy and full tummies, get up from the table after their mom frees them. They make a start toward the kitchen with Kathy.

“What would it mean if the test is positive for breast cancer or whatever?” Maureen says with a slightly worried tone.

“Don’t worry, Mo. If it is positive for any type of illness or disorder, it doesn’t mean we have it for sure or we’re certifiably getting it in the future. These tests are not determiners of health, just risk factors to consider. If the breast cancer gene is hereditary for us, then we would still do mammograms and health checks just like any other woman, except now we have more information at our disposal to act quicker if we feel symptoms or anything else. This kind of knowledge is power. That’s what my research is all about.” 

Olivia watches as Lizzie smiles up at Maureen in reassurance, touching her hand that is resting on her other shoulder. She looks back down at the computer, “And Dad’s results show that he is negative for being a carrier of that genetic mutation anyway. It does say positive for being a carrier of heart disease, cystic fibrosis, and diabetes though. And he is heavily Irish. Shocker. There are so many goddamn Stablers listed in the ancestry test, Jesus Christ.”

“Wow, great genetic lottery there, Dad. And you had a bajillion kids too. We’re all going to die,” Dickie says with a sardonic smile, lifting his wine into the air in a motion of cheers.

“Hey! It’s not my fault. I didn’t know. Blame the matriarch of the family for passing that onto me,” Elliot lowers his voice before saying, “though any fucked-up genes probably came from my old man.” Olivia nods with an expression of agreement, her face saying what she is thinking: That’s probably true for me too. He then waves his hand outward, gesturing to his wife, still flurrying around the kitchen, “And anyway, who knows what came from your mom’s side?”

Lizzie moves onto Kathy’s profile next, but they move on quickly after only a glance, deciding to look at it later since her mom is busy in the kitchen.

“Damn, this is kind of morbid. Do I wanna think about death on my birthday?” Eli says.

“Can you all relax? Jesus,” Lizzie says, rolling her eyes. She focuses on her laptop once more, quickly scanning the different rows of data.

“Lizzie, look at mine and see if Mom and Dad gave me a terrible disease, please,” Dickie perks up from his seat.

“No, no. Mine first! I am the youngest and have a better chance of living longer,” Eli replies.

A sound can be heard from the kitchen, like something fell onto the ground. Then a quiet “shit!” following after.

“Kath, you ok? Need help?” Elliot asks.

“I’m–I’m good. The knife just slipped from my hand. All good,” Kathy slightly stutters, her voice sounding a little shaky. Olivia sees Carl get up to divert his rowdy kids away from the kitchen, making sure they don’t distract his mother-in-law and she watches as he tries to help her gather the utensils and dishes that they need.

“God, you are all so dramatic. I’m looking at Maureen and Carl right now, then I will look at Eli’s because Dickie isn’t allowed to change his mind and he can live in ignorance like he wanted to before.”

Olivia takes another sip of her wine, tells Noah to come sit back down.

As Lizzie goes on reading, sharing the results with her older sister and her husband—which revealed that Carl has Spanish roots, an unheard of second cousin in Madrid, and an incredible genetic lottery apparently, with most of the results being negative for carrying or having mutations much to Maureen’s relief—she moves onto Eli’s profile. But her expression morphs into confusion when she looks at her little brother’s results. 

“Huh.”

She pulls up Dickie’s profile next to her brother’s, then pulls up Elliot’s next, comparing the three men. Lizzie’s eyebrows furrow even more.

“Hey–Liz! Focus on me. I thought you were ignoring Dickie’s test…”

“I-I know, but I think your results are not actually yours, Eli. I think the lab must have messed up.” Lizzie starts searching through her emails, making sure she didn’t pull up the info of a different subject. But, reopening the file that has her little brother’s full name, she sees the same results that puzzled her.

“What do you mean?”

“OKAY. Elizabeth, let’s put that away for a sec while we do the cake,” Kathy rushes into the room, heading to Eli’s seat. “Come sit down, Eli.” Her hands are a little shaky and the cake almost slides out of her grip onto the floor. 

Elliot looks at her with a slightly concerned expression. “Kathy, you sure you’re alright? Did you hurt yourself earlier?” 

“Well…your results should have the same…um–just…it should be like Dickie’s and Dad’s, but…I think it’s just a fuck-up,” Lizzie says, her voice getting quieter as she switches to the ancestry portion of Eli’s sample. Her eyes pass over the section labeled “Immediate Family,” sees a name she doesn’t know listed amongst her siblings and her mother, sees the absence of her dad’s name, which should be —

Oh, no.

The realization hits her with a devastating crash. Lizzie’s mind unexpectedly shifts to an image of her younger self, at the beach with her family. The vast ocean’s seemingly calm, languid energy changed in seconds with the darkening, gloomy sky, creating stronger waves until one creeped behind her, slammed her hard in the back, too quick for her little body to react. Her equilibrium thrown off balance as she rolls and flails underwater, nothing to hold onto, desperate for air, breathless. Until her dad’s strong grip pulled her out of the water into his safe, comforting embrace.

She feels that way now, only there is no one to pull her out. Especially not her dad.

Lizzie looks up at her mother clumsily putting candles on Eli’s cake. She slams her laptop shut, hoping that none of her siblings behind her were paying close enough attention. 

“Wait, who the hell is Anthony Sartori?”

Well, shit.

Chapter Text

I hate to even say this within my own thoughts, Lizzie thinks, but maybe Dickie was right. 

This might not have been the best activity to do after all.

“Wait, who the hell is Anthony Sartori?”

“Probably our great-great-great grandfather. Wouldn't be surprised if we have some Italian roots too,” Maureen says with a laugh, retreating back to her seat. “Maybe it was our ancestors calling you to Rome, Eli.”

Fuck. Lizzie's stomach turns.

“Mom’s right, let’s do the cake. My eyes hurt from looking at this,” Lizzie mumbles. Her mother, meanwhile, looks like she might be sick as she sets the final candle onto the cake. Then she goes back to the kitchen to grab a lighter.

“But I wanna know if I need to prepare my funeral,” Eli says with a pout, his grim joke earning him a passing slap to the back of the head from his grandmother as he takes his seat. 

“What did you get for him, Bernie?” Olivia questions as she sees the woman gently slide the gift over to him. 

She doesn’t know how, but Lizzie is pretty sure that Olivia knows something is…wrong. Maybe decades of being a cop has fine-tuned her intuition and now her radar sensing incoming danger is pinging louder with each moment passing. At least it’s what she assumes as she sees the woman drink more of her wine in bigger sips, sees her insistence to distract and shift topics.

Lizzie focuses back on Grandma Bernie. She hands him a small, neatly wrapped present. As he rips apart the thin blue paper, he reveals a matte-black jewelry box. Inside is a sterling silver rope chain, the centerpiece being a simple cross. It looks a little dated, with faint scratches on the edges of the pendant. But it’s a nice piece of jewelry, its real quality shining through its heaviness, the weighted history attached to it.

“This was your Grandpa Joe’s. Your dad wore it for a while when he was younger until he got his own. Now it’s yours, Eli. Happy Birthday.”

“Thank you, Grandma B,” Eli says, intensely looking at the necklace then hesitantly tilting his head up toward Dad, likely searching for his reaction. He sees one side of his face lift into a crooked smile, giving a nod of approval. 

Lizzie had heard all about her father’s conflicted feelings about Grandpa Joe from Katie, all that had bubbled to the surface during his undercover stint as a member of the Brotherhood. He was tight-lipped about it, of course. So typical of their dad to keep shit locked inside, but he opened up slowly to Katie, maybe realizing she’s an adult now, or because her job exposes her more to his world of corruption and darkness. Whatever the reason, the two girls are just glad that he would even try to share. And he did eventually.

The reveal about his corruption, his undeserved medal, all of it tainting the distant and few good memories of his own dad. They all knew he was struggling with it, despite not knowing every single detail. 

But, according to Katie, after earning his own medal, her dad realized it only made him want to show a better example of a man to his kids. He wanted to prove that he could be a good cop and a good father. He hated that for most of his life, he was caught between admiration for his dad as a cop and condemnation for his actions as a father, his anger which often became physical against his own family, or his absence because of his “duty” to the job. 

“Which was all bullshit, Katie. It was all a lie. I knew he could be a selfish prick, but I thought he at least was a good cop. Turns out that’s not even true.”

So he chose, instead, to leave both the good and the bad behind, moving forward with the mindset that his kids did not need to feel his anger and resentment or any twisted feelings. They didn’t need his own disappointment of his dad to be transferred to them. A continuous cycle of pain and hurt, reflected on their faces but now directed at him. Elliot wanted to do better by his family, for them and for him. So he went to church, forgave but didn’t forget, and tried to let most of his feelings about his father die with Frank Donnelly. 

And Lizzie knows that her dad is trying, that he only wants the best for them. She just wishes, and all of his children, too, that he could see that he often retreats into his job instead of falling back into his family; he's too proud, still, to reveal that vulnerable side of him, or maybe just scared that they will see anything besides the strong, protective figure that they have grown up with, and he falls into the familiarity of avoidance more than he wants to admit to himself or them. 

Despite what he says about forgiveness and breaking cycles, despite his desperate need to believe he was different from him in order to feel like he didn’t royally fuck up his kids, Lizzie knows that her father will forever be haunted by his own father's ghost. He just needs therapy to get his shit together, she thinks. 

This entirely fucking family needs it. Lizzie rolls her eyes, uncomfortable now, thinking about the current glaring problem that she hopes doesn't interrupt the rare peace that they have settled into.

“You heard her,” Elliot says, “It’ll look better on you than me, son. Put it on.” A shy but radiant grin appears on Eli’s face.

“Do we all get family heirlooms orrr is it just Eli?”

“Stop being jealous, Rich. You have to earn them,” Maureen says with a sickly sweet voice, mocking him. “It does look good on you, Eli.”

Everyone’s oblivious, Lizzie thinks. Mostly. She can carry the weight of this revelation for a little bit longer, until she can be alone with her mom.

Crisis averted.

Her eyes bounce between different figures at the table, anxious, until a shift to her side makes her gaze settle on her sister. Lizzie nervously gulps at the distant look on her face.

Kathleen meant to whisper to Lizzie. She really did. But there are a few drinks in her. And her voice carries anyway. Her question disrupting the chatter around them.

“Why wasn’t Dad listed under ‘immediate family’?”

It could have been explained as a glitch. A mess-up from the program. It could have been written off as her misreading it. Lizzie’s the expert, anyway. It would have been believable. It could have been explained in a million different ways besides the one that nobody would want to think of as a possibility. 

But her mom’s sudden hard stop with a lighter in hand and Lizzie’s face crumpling into distress before she could fix her expression makes the room go silent, all of them forced to stew in discomfort, not sure how to react to their obvious distress.

“Mm–Katie, I don’t know. Let’s just cut the cake–” Lizzie tries to say with a choked voice, grabbing her laptop and holding it to her chest like it’s her most precious possession.

“Mom hasn’t lit the candles yet and we haven’t sung,” Kathleen interrupts, snapping her head up away from her sister, a look of rising disbelief on her face as she sees her mother curl into herself, gaze on the floor, twiddling with the lighter. “Lizzie, w-what? Is it a glitch or…why isn’t Dad’s name under Eli’s profile?”

At the mention of his title, Kathleen startles as her dad abruptly gets up, his chair sliding across the floor with a sharp, loud scrape. He ignores Olivia’s quiet call of “El.”  

Liz puts her head down as she hears him walk over, her breathing more labored. Katie suddenly feels 14 years old again, small and sitting with her knees curled up, listening to her little brother argue with their dad about trouble he had gotten into at school, a stern scolding that she is sure Lizzie has only ever heard from their dad when her more troublesome siblings like her and Dickie would give him a hard time, never on the receiving end herself. He stops behind Lizzie, extends his hand out. 

“Let me see, Lizzie,” Elliot says, each word quiet, but hard as they fall from his mouth. 

“Dad, I–”

“Now, Elizabeth.”

Katie’s face mirrors that of Lizzie’s, tears fall down their cheeks as her sister hands him the laptop. She sees Liz look across the table to Eli, her eyes wide and apologetic. He just looks back at her with confusion. His own breathing becomes slightly more panicked, his body tense, leg bouncing incessantly under the table.

Kathleen sees her dad open the laptop where he stands, his eyes moving across the screen like he doesn’t know which detail to focus on. He takes a deep breath, the veins in his neck pulsing slightly as he swallows.

“Sartori...I think I remember a divorce lawyer with that name.” His voice sounds even. Controlled. The calm before the storm. 

“Elliot—” Olivia gently starts. Kathleen notices her eyes have become glassy, her face pulled into a slight frown, and she just looks sad.  

“Wasn’t that the guy you almost hired before you settled on Clement? I wondered why you switched because he seemed to be good at his job–”

“Elliot, stop,” Kathy pleads. Katie only curls into herself more, feeling sorry for her mother, for herself and her family, but also anxious to prevent everyone from the explosive fallout that will inevitably happen tonight. Her mom looks at each of her kids quickly, not holding eye contact for long. Kathleen just looks between her parents, eyes nervously darting back and forth.

“Huh, maybe not so good ethically since it seems he has no qualms with sleeping with clients–”

“God, Elliot, do you hear yourself? Before you accuse me of cheating, we were both separated–”

“Do you? Jesus Christ, Kathy. That’s the least of my goddamn worries. I know we were separated. That’s not even the fucking issue. What I care about is you lying to me about our son–”

“Guys, maybe you should—” Lizzie tries to say.

Katie watches Eli get up suddenly and walk around the table, intending to grab the laptop from his dad. Lizzie lunges and grabs the device out of her dad’s hands as he just stares at Kathy with glassy eyes. She holds it tightly to her chest again and musters with as much strength as possible, “Eli, go sit down.”

“No, what the hell is he talking about? Why did Kathleen ask that? Tell me what’s going on! Mom, what—?” his panicked questions coming out in between wild pants, his anxiety clawing at his throat. 

“Seamus, Kieran, let’s go to grandpa and grandma’s room. I’ll let you watch Encanto for the billionth time,” says Carl as he gets up from his seat. He looks to his wife, who looks back with a tearful, loving gaze. They excitedly follow. The twins, like most kids, might be perceptive and sensitive to upset energy, but they can be easily distracted too. Thank God, Kathleen thinks. They depart with one last glance, but reaching the bedroom, Carl pushes them along and shuts the door behind them.

Snapping out of his burning trance, Elliot holds onto his deeply upset son, wrapping his hand around Eli and bringing him to his chest, rubbing against the nape of his neck into his hair, hoping the weight and warmth of his rough hand grounds him. “Take deep breaths, son. It’s alright. I’m sorry. It’s ok.” The anger is radiating off of Elliot in waves. The looks of sympathy and heartbreak around him only amplifying it more and more. 

“Don’t treat me like I’m a kid! I’m not an idiot! Just show me what’s on Lizzie’s laptop!” Eli yells, tearing himself away from his dad’s embrace, tears running in rivulets down his cheeks as his panic does not lessen one bit. Kathleen knows that her brother (God, half - brother?) knows the painful truth. He just won’t believe it. He can’t. He needs to see proof, solid evidence that can’t be refuted. 

“Eli, sweetie,” Kathy takes a few steps toward the dining table, the first movement she has made in the past two minutes, “you need to calm down. You’re going to work yourself up too mu—”

“Shut up, Mom! You’re a liar! How could you do this?” Eli’s breathing becomes more harsh. The betrayal ripping through him as Kathleen desperately tries to soothe her little brother with a gentle touch, but he keeps pulling away. He probably doesn’t notice (or care) that his mom flinched at his angry outburst, her face riddled with shame and heartbreak.

“Eli, don’t talk to Mom that way,” Maureen pipes up.

“It’s not true. It’s not true!” He shakes his head rapidly, putting his hands on his head like it might quiet the panic in his mind. 

Feeling someone try to reach for him again, Eli rushes to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. The family hears faint clicks as he locks it.

Silence. All eyes on a frozen Kathy Stabler. Utterly still.

“I need to hear you say it.” 

“I really think that we should wait. This isn’t the right time–”

“Really? 19 years feels like a long time to me. How about you just be honest with me?” Every word meant to be a sharp, piercing arrow, aimed directly at her.

“Stop it. Elliot, I’m serious.” And each one lands. At her heart, her stomach. 

“Tell me it’s not true, Kathy.”

“Elliot…” 

“Tell me that it’s wrong. That you didn’t lie to me all these years—”

“Elliot, please. Eli’s upset. Can we—”

“—Tell me that you didn’t lie to my face that day when you said—”

“I-I didn’t. Not really. You are his father, Elliot.”

Elliot scoffs. Not really. 

“You’re damn right I’m his father. I raised him, I was there for his birth, his nightmares, his bedtimes, his soccer games, all of it. He is my son! But tell me the fucking truth, Kathy. Is he mine?”  

Elliot Stabler is not one to shy away from danger. His job actually propelled him directly into the worst of it, beyond the crazy shit that the average cop would see. And he might lie and say that all those close calls, the blood spills and adrenaline crashes, made him less afraid—of death, of the sick and cruel world that was exposed to him during his 12 or so years at SVU, or of becoming the very thing he spent his whole career fighting against. But that’s a lie. The fear never went away, and the more things happened, to him and to those around him, the more scared he became. 

Though he can honestly say that nothing has made him more afraid than those five seconds of silence after he asked the question. Not a gun in his face, not a demented perp with nothing to lose, not the chaos of an explosion just a couple meters away. No, what made his heart race and his body tremble was that pause. And then—

“No.”

A beeping ringtone sounds from the kitchen. Elliot, standing stock still, lets that single word seep into him and dig into every part of his body. Until he suddenly walks with purposeful strides over to his phone, avoiding Kathy as he weaves into the kitchen. 

Instead of answering it like they all expected him to, he picks it up, lets it ring in his hand until it stops.

Static silence surrounds him, he leans into the island, facing the kitchen sink, his back to the rest of the party, rigid and tense. He stares out the window above but is really looking at nothing at all. His phone is still in his right hand. When the ringing starts up again, he throws the device into the kitchen sink, the force of the impact causing the screen to crack at one edge and the few glasses inside the sink shatter into the air, small shards flying in all directions. The ringing continues.

Elliot puts his head in his hands.

Kathleen looks at her mom standing a few feet away from the dining table, hunched over and hugging herself. She gazes at the people sitting around her. Her siblings all with various looks of heartbreak, betrayal. Olivia, just as silent and uncomfortable as the rest of them, but she looks past Kathy, eyes with unshed tears set on her dad in the kitchen. Her face is filled with sympathy, a familiar expression of wistfulness—one that Kathleen has seen passed between the pair since she was much younger—but the tight grip on her biceps as she crosses her arms communicates…anger? Or that’s what Kathleen assumes, at least. 

She sees Noah stir beside Olivia, lean over to his mom and whisper, “I want to see if Eli is ok.”

“Oh, sweet boy,” Olivia sighs. She caresses his face, speaking quietly, “He might need a little bit of space right now, but you can try.”

Noah walks to the door with tentative steps. He looks back at his mom one more time, silently seeking her approval. She nods, go ahead. Everyone else is still looking nervously between Elliot and Kathy. He knocks lightly, “Eli? Can I come in?”

In the kitchen, her dad briefly lets his hands fall back down to his sides as he slightly turns his head to the left. Waiting. Listening. Just like the rest of them. Kathleen shakily inhales. Please, Eli.

The door unlocks. Noah takes a step back as a slight opening appears. No Eli—just an open door, a symbol of silent entry. Noah slips in and softly closes the door behind him.

Kathleen lets herself relax after that, happy, at least, that Eli has an immediate ally, a friend who can help him deal with this colossal mess. She looks at her dad again, sees him walk away from the kitchen island, hears his shoes crunching glass beneath him as he heads outside. His phone rings again. This time he answers, likely desperate for a distraction. The rough sound of his name is exhaled, loud and gruff, as he closes the sliding door, entering the back garden.

His departure triggers movement from the rest of the family, like the snap of the door latch as it shut was the press of a ‘play’ button. Maureen pulls her mother into the kitchen. Dickie gets up and follows his oldest sister. The three of them frantically whisper to each other as the two siblings calmly try to get answers from their upset mom. Maureen is the first to break away and lean down to the floor, picking up bigger pieces of broken glass and taking them to the trash.

Kathleen sighs, “I’ll go get Carl, tell him we should take the twins to the park. Grandma B, wanna join? You guys just…” She stands from her chair, pauses as she tries to search for the right words, to say something that would encourage reconciliation, but falls short with helplessness and finishes, “...make sure all the glass is cleaned up before someone gets hurt.” And she leaves with her coat in her hand and Bernie following her. 

God, what the hell just happened?

Chapter Text

The slight shake of her hands makes refilling her wine more messy than she intended, but Olivia is just glad that there is still some left over after the long evening. 

Her anxiety about coming to this family dinner had not waned once since she hesitantly accepted Elliot’s invite. The feeling starting at the pit of her stomach when she first arrived and now amplified, reaching deep into every crevice of her body as her son is hidden away in Eli’s room, as she hears the soft cries of Lizzie and the loving words of Simone, trying to calm her girlfriend down. 

She honestly just wants to take Noah and leave. Spare him from all the drama. Her fingers twitch every time she looks over at Eli’s shut door. The only thing keeping her from running into that room right now and taking her son out of this mess is the text chain between her and Noah.

Everything ok, my love? I think we should go soon, give everyone some space.

yeah. eli is upset though i don’t want to leave him

I know. It’s a mess. I’m glad you are helping him, but I really think we should go home now. He’ll be ok.

i wanna stay mom please? just a little longer?

She sighs. Olivia was hoping that her check in would give him the opportunity to tell her that he wants to leave, but it seems like he doesn’t want to go as much as she really wants to. Of course it’s her decision in the end as the parent. But she’s torn between keeping him protected from all of this as much as possible and letting him stick with Eli. 

Her boy has had some difficulty with other kids and their teasing because of his interest in dance and, more recently, his mom being a police officer. But Noah looks up to Eli like he walks on water, and she knows Eli is a good kid despite the trouble he got into in the past.

Knowing that her son might be able to help Eli in this messed up situation, that he even feels the desire to support the youngest Stabler kid, makes her feel warm. She wants him to have some semblance of normalcy and family that is still connected to her and she knows the Stablers—loves them like her own.

It won’t be so bad if he stays in Eli’s room, right? The last thing she wants is to expose Noah to an explosive family argument. What he saw already was bordering on too much for her, and Olivia knows that he probably isn’t used to seeing any kind of family conflict since it has only been the two of them for his whole life. 

But the Stablers are part of her. And now part of her son too because of Eli.

No matter how much she wants to pretend that she can easily detach herself from their family, it really just takes one of them to ask for her and she’ll come running.

Five more minutes then we leave. I’ll come knock.

She doesn’t get a response. I guess I could take the time to check on the rest of them before we leave. Especially Elliot. 

Olivia checks her other messages after feeling the buzz of an email.  

Her eyebrows raise in slight surprise. There aren’t any urgent calls or texts from work. Just the typical bureaucratic bullshit. Shocking only because it’s close to the holidays, which typically means more domestic disputes and family reunions that sometimes lead to the reveal of darker (really dark) family secrets.

Maybe it is busy, she thinks, but Fin has got it covered. Olivia knows her sergeant tries his best to keep her out of the office if he can help it, even if it means suffering through McGrath. She has a hard time delegating, but he makes it easier for her when he practically pushes her out of her office to go home and see her son on the slower days.

"And say hi to that bald partner of yours. Tell him to stop bugging me and asking if you're busy."

She laughed it off the most recent time Fin said that to her, but Elliot has been unusually present in her life right now. Even if he can’t see her in person, he has been calling her, texting her. 

Leading up to this party, Elliot had insisted in his (several) texts this entire week that she should bring Noah with her so that he could feel more comfortable being around the older Stabler kids, especially since Noah’s budding relationship with Eli seemed to be progressing much faster than either of them had expected. 

In hindsight, she does feel like she maybe should have pushed harder against it.

But she reluctantly caved to Elliot’s invite after she answered a late night phone call from him. All the stress and exhaustion of the past week was catching up to her, making her crave a distraction. The emotional embrace shared between her and Amanda that day at the precinct as she said goodbye to one of her closest friends, lingered with her throughout the rest of her tumultuous shift. 

Getting hit with such news after the newly-discovered McCanns and their too-normal family and Noah’s insistence to meet his “real family” (ouch) just made Amanda’s departure that much more painful, a loss she could not bear. She wanted comfort, and it didn’t matter that her relationship with Elliot was not at its best right now. 

A part of her knew that answering, hearing his voice, would bring her that small sense of comfort—a thought so unnerving that she had let the phone ring for longer, pacing small steps across her bedroom floor, finally closing her door shut, until eventually she picked up her phone. 

Though verging into friendlier territory, the communication and trust between her and Elliot is still fragile. Because of the Wheatley drama and all that was revealed in between. Because of their reluctance to share anything too intense, too personal. Not to mention the discomfort shared by the entire family and Olivia once Kathy woke up. 

Conversations over the phone are usually short, filled with heavy silence in between various topics about work, being a parent, (which can be touchy territory depending on the day) or the goddamn weather. Small talk. Until it veers into something real.

“First step into solid friendship, Liv. Casual hangouts.”

“We have hung out,” Olivia says back. She sets her phone onto the bed, presses on the speaker button, and walks to her dresser to change out of her work clothes. “We had coffee last Tuesday.”

"You had coffee that I so generously bought for you from that little bodega by the 1-6. I had my delicious homemade Italian coffee that you refuse to try. And you said you had to work five minutes after and left.”

“Yeah, well,” Olivia sighs, the exhaustion catching up with her and creeping into her voice, “with the way work is going now, you’re lucky you even get five minutes.”

Olivia moves her neck around in half circles, pressing down on the tense knots at the back. Changing into an oversized grey t-shirt with simple black lettering across the upper left corner reading “NYPD” and blue silk shorts, she feels her muscles instantly relax as she sheds the remains of her hard day, her badge and earrings haphazardly tossed on her nightstand. 

She grabs her phone, takes it off speaker, and puts it up to her ear, crawling into bed as Elliot continues.

“Look, we started with quick coffee runs and catching up before work. We worked cases, and while I enjoy that time together, I just think maybe now is the time to, you know…move up a level. See each other outside of the job. Especially since I have heard you have been hanging with my kids.”

“Oh, you know,” Olivia starts, trying to act playful, “they are much more fun to be around. Katie and I are on the search for the best little café near the precinct where we can connect for work.”

“And what, we can’t do a fun little search of our own? I seem to recall one of our favorite diners closing from the pandemic…Maybe we should find a new spot together.”

“Doing that with your kids is one thing, but just us, I…I’m not so sure that would be…friendly territory.”

“Friends can eat breakfast together, you know. We used to do it all the time as partners.”

“It’s different now, Elliot. You know that. You know why.” It came out harsher than she intended. But she can’t help but think that he isn’t really thinking at all with what he's asking of her.

“I know. I know, Liv. I’m sorry.”

“No, Elliot. I-I don’t—” Olivia takes a deep breath. “I just mean…I just think we should take some time to—”

“I think enough time has passed, no?”

Olivia huffs out a breath in frustration. “Yeah, that’s true. And so much has changed, Elliot. We can’t just…ignore the gaps and go back to how it was before…”

Before you left me and cut me out of your life for ten years. Before you reopened old wounds that never really fully healed in the first place by crash-landing back into my life. Before you reeled me back in with a little bit of hope and friendship and the idea of maybe something more, only for all of that to shatter once your wife miraculously lived. 

Her throat tightens as her mind starts racing. Honestly, this is all just so tiring. 

“I’m not saying that, Liv. I’m not. I…” She hears him sigh loudly. “I know that we can’t go back. But I want to try to fix this…fix us. Because this, all of this, is my mess. And you’ve carried enough of the weight for both of us for too long. Don’t think that I don’t notice. I just need you to trust that I’m…trying. Really trying to, well, be your partner again…in whatever way you might want that. If-if you even want that at all...but-”

Olivia lets out a long sigh, shutting her eyes softly as she fiddles with her necklaces.

"I…I just miss you, Liv."

Fuck.

Elliot seems to be the only person who can make her blood boil and heart ache with affection at the same time. 

It’s nice that he can finally acknowledge how difficult all of these adjustments have been for her. It’s nice that he can be honest with her. It’s especially sweet that he can recognize that, even though she is more hesitant to ignite their friendship again and have him fill the Elliot-shaped hole that had been carved out of her life for a decade, he is the one that hasn’t been ready.

All of this “mess,” as he calls it. That’s certainly one way to describe it. 

He was the one constantly pushing her away, running into the comfort of his undercover identities and getting hurt in the process, or making questionable decisions like kissing the wife of the man who definitely tried to kill your wife who was also in a damn coma. 

Whatever he might think or say, Elliot was not ready. Not in a healthy way, at least. Not in a way that she felt she could trust. 

And how dare he ask her to trust him so easily again. Trust that he’s trying when his comeback and all of his grief-stricken behavior that followed only made her hurt more, doubt more. Not believing he could even be that reliable person for her anymore if he could barely hold himself up.

Can she really trust that he won’t leave her again after pushing her away so much?

But she does miss him. Has missed him for the longest time. And it grates on her that those feelings can override all the other bullshit he has thrown at her.

Be your partner again...in whatever way you might want that.

And, God, who is she kidding? At one point (or several), she actually wanted to be more with Elliot. Olivia thought back then that they might have had a chance with his separation. But he just pushed her away more, making her believe that she was in over her head with Elliot. And then once it finally became known that he carried a torch for her for years, that he loved her, she thought maybe, just maybe, they had an actual shot. 

She should have known better.

She doesn’t know what to say. Her heart and her mind fill her with thoughts and feelings warring against each other. Doesn’t know if she wants her anger and heartbreak to leave her mouth first before any sort of forgiveness or friendship. 

Instead, she just settles on saying what she knows for certain.

“I do. Everything is just…complicated. But I do know that you're trying and I want to move forward...”

“Good, yeah. That’s what I want, too,” he pauses, clears his throat. “Look, Eli only turns 19 once. Let’s make the most of it. You know he’ll want you to be there. And Noah.”

Olivia tilts her head back against her pillow, closes her eyes and sighs, “Noah has been asking to see Eli again, actually. But…Elliot I just—” 

Silence envelopes the room except for a faint hum of static from her phone. The duration of the call reads 4:58. Five minutes in and Olivia finds herself unable to continue, afraid that she might have to offer more explanations as to why she is so hesitant.  

She wants to hang up and go to sleep to forget the day. But she knows he will need an answer, and Elliot will be his usual stubborn self if she doesn’t respond with the answer he desires, and she is much too tired to argue. Before she gets the chance to speak, Elliot's voice travels into her ear.

“Just come. That’s all I’m asking.”

And really, it’s not. But either way, Olivia backs down after dragging the silence out as much as possible. “Ok. I’ll be there. Both of us will be there.”

“Ok.” She can hear the grin on his face in that simple word. Can picture him looking down, crinkles beside his eyes as he tries but fails to tamper down his elation at her acceptance, however reluctant she sounds. Her next deep breath is shaky. “Don’t have to bring anything. Just you and your boy.”

“Well, knowing my son, he might already have a gift for Eli.”

“He’s a sweet kid. I’m glad he and Eli are bonding. He should finally have some normalcy within the family, ya know? Him and Dickie love each other but, God, do they bicker.”

Before Olivia thinks too hard about Elliot grouping Noah into his statement of family and drawing comparisons between the two new friends with Eli and his brother, Olivia answers quickly, “He is a sweet boy. Hey, before I forget,” and she moves onto another topic that wouldn’t cause a swirl of anxiety in her gut, “I heard about Ayanna’s promotion. What does that mean for your team?”

“She ended up not taking the job, actually. Overheard her talking to Lillian about ‘her place being with her team.’ It was a real sweet moment. Even saged the whole place after she left.”

“Sage? Who are you and what have you done with Elliot Stabler?” Olivia teases in disbelief. “I’m surprised at her rejecting the promotion. Would’ve been good for her. You should be thanking her for staying.”

“Yeah, I was surprised too. But she said it was best for us. The whole team, I mean. I couldn’t help but agree.” Olivia knows that Elliot is eternally grateful that he found such a great partner in Bell. He has told her sweetly during one of their phone calls that he didn’t think anyone could replace Olivia, still believes that with his entire being, but there is a deep respect and loyalty between him and Bell that feels strong. Solid. No complications, just a reliable partnership.

It might not be fair for Elliot to seek stability from his new partner, especially with all of his brashness and stubbornness that she knows infuriates Bell more than anything. But Olivia also knows that Bell relies on him as her anchor, too. However ridiculous that sounds to him.

‘Elliot Stabler’ and ‘stability’ have never once been strung together in a positive sentence, he said to her jokingly.  

Though Olivia wishes he would give himself more credit seeing as he was her anchor for 12 years.

He continues, “So I embraced the hippie shit and…we saged. Well, she did while I watched from a distance. Did a few loops around my desk.”

Olivia releases a short hum at that. Her hand rubs at her chest. She can’t help but think about her own past partnership with Elliot. The mood in her bedroom becomes slightly somber. 

However unreasonable it is for her to feel it, the soreness rushes through her anyway. She knows that she is the one putting the brakes on any kind of developing relationship with him, knows that he is more than willing to reestablish their familiar ease that came with being partners.

But she still feels a pang of hurt hearing about his partnership with Bell. Couldn't help but feel envious of Elliot’s remarkable ability to keep everyone he’s close with from leaving his orbit, while she has to fight to preserve whoever sticks around, getting constantly left behind.

Olivia has her team; she knows Fin is someone to lean on, someone to trust like a partner especially at work. But an actual partner. Someone to shoulder the weight of life with her, someone who holds her steady when the job becomes too much, someone who knows her beyond the projection of the strong Captain Olivia Benson. Someone to take care of her. 

Elliot was the one man who got close enough to that role for her. Nobody has come close to him. And he hurt her the worst of all the people she once trusted. He left her. If Elliot, of all people, could walk away, what chance did anyone else have? Would she ever find someone who wouldn’t leave? Or was she always meant to be alone?

“You still there?” Elliot chimes in after hearing the static again. 

“Yeah–I…I gotta go, El. I had a long day.”

“Ok, yeah,” his reply soft and bordering on disappointment. “Is everything alright? Noah…?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just work. Noah is fine.” Moving forward, Olivia. Baby steps.

Olivia shakily inhales. She can try too, show a glimpse of vulnerability, of her heart. She can widen the margins of their tentative friendship just an inch. That's all.

She takes a deep breath, “He’s, uh, actually been incessantly asking to plan a soccer day with Eli. Apparently they talked about it, but I don’t know how or when this came up…” Olivia trails off, now scrunching her eyebrows as she realizes Do they text each other? Huh. She shakes her head, “Not important, but…I was thinking that, maybe, we could plan something soon? Will Eli be off at college?”

She hears nothing for a few moments and suddenly wishes she could see his face. She could read him so well usually, even the silences between them, but this pause made her want to take the words back. A rush of heat floods her face.

“Uh–no, Eli is home for a while. On break, I think for New Year’s and all that. That’s…that sounds great, Liv. Yeah, yeah, let’s plan it.”

“Ok, yeah. Let’s…do that. Noah will be ecstatic, I’m sure,” Olivia says, relieved. 

Despite the nervousness and shakiness in her voice, she’s glad she asked. This will be good for her and Noah. She thinks. She hopes.

But Olivia also feels the intense desire to keep all those hopeful, giddy feelings small and locked away inside her, holding them close to her chest. 

She’s afraid she might be disappointed, or worse, her son might become attached and she wants to protect him from any heartbreak that could come from his eagerness to make friends with the youngest Stabler. She doesn’t want to dwell on Elliot’s soft reaction, nor does she want to think too much about how this might be too much too soon for her, more than just “going up a level” in their friendship as Elliot said before.

She just allows herself to feel a glimmer of pleasure at his surprised reaction and his noticeable attempt to stifle his happiness.

“So will Eli. I…This’ll be good for all of us, Liv,” Elliot says, finally inserting his key into his apartment door.

All of us…right.

“Yeah,” Olivia lets out another sigh, the tiredness creeping in more, “Don’t forget to tell Kathy and Eli tomorrow, alright?” She slipped her name in quickly to get it over with. She has to, because she knows Elliot won’t. But Olivia is not trying to make things more complicated between them by neglecting the mention of his wife. 

Being around Kathy is fine, most of the time.

Being around Kathy and Elliot is an entirely different beast.

She can’t seem to escape the awkward air that surrounds the married couple, and, really, it's the main reason why she avoids “casual hangouts” with the Stablers.

Honestly, she thought that Elliot might actually even out and be more of the Elliot she once knew after Kathy’s miraculous recovery. And yeah, he is doing a lot better. But there’s still a heaviness attached to him, different from the kind that would settle on him after a hard case. Something she had only seen those first few months after finding out his wife was pregnant again and he went back home. 

And Olivia does not know the extent of what Elliot (or his kids) has shared with Kathy while she was in her coma, assumes that he wouldn’t be so forthcoming about his confessions to his old partner, their intimate moments or touches that had never before carried such intensity, or his actions influenced by his PTSD. Even the situation of Eli’s disappearance seems like it might be a touchy subject, but he had to have said something about that, of course. 

But everything else from when she was gone—his attempts to reconnect with her, to be friends with her, the “I love you,” their few moments as partners, the Letter, which invokes ugly feelings towards Kathy as much as she tries to suppress them—who knows if Elliot told his wife about any of it? It’s not likely, and that just makes the awkwardness worse. Like she knows something about Elliot that Kathy, his own wife, doesn’t know. 

But hasn’t it always been like that?  

“Right…I will, uh, I’ll let them know,” Elliot says.

Olivia swallows, takes her phone away from her ear to catch a glimpse of the time, but focuses on the call length instead. 9:46…9:47…9:48. This was the longest call that they shared that was not work related.

Her mouth quirks up. It’s nice, she thinks, that he’s trying.

Though Elliot’s attempts at reaching out via random late night calls are not always easy for her, she realizes that, for once, she wants this one to last longer. She lifts it back to her ear, the faint staticky air of their silence all that exists between them in the next ten seconds. The quiet—heavy, reluctant, longing—is disrupted by Olivia.

“Well…my friend, Elliot. We, uh, we will be there. For the party. Noah has practice before, but we should make it on time. It’ll be good to see everyone…”

“I’m looking forward to it. Goodnight, my friend, Olivia.” His voice is practically the softest she has ever heard him.

“Night, El.”

With the disconnected call comes an immediate emptiness in Olivia’s room. She was right. It was nice to hear his voice after the day she had. As much as she wishes it weren’t true.

She didn’t need the complicated feelings and suffocating emotions that came from being around the chaos that is Elliot Stabler and his family. She has, honestly, had her fill of it already from the past few years.

But there are still parts of her, the loudest and largest parts, that consider him as home. As the only family she had. Parts that remember his tenderness when speaking to victims, when carrying children that have become attached to him, when speaking to his own children over the phone when he’s stuck at work. His fierce protectiveness, his unwavering loyalty. All the best parts of Elliot hang onto her memory and burrow themselves into her heart, refusing to release her from its grip.

She is looking forward to it, too. Almost too much.

So, she and Noah go to Eli’s birthday party with Olivia holding onto hope that everything will be good, everyone will be amicable and happy, at the very least for her son.

And, well, she was kind of right. But her silent prayers seemed not to have reached the Stablers in general.

Olivia sets down her glass of wine, taking a sip after filling it, shuffling in her seat next to Simone. After a brief minute of gathering herself, she stands up and walks over to sit where Kathleen was sitting, next to Lizzie. She tucks the crying girl into her side, rubbing her arm up and down, muttering quietly in soothing words. “Simone, could you get some water for Lizzie, please?”

As Simone gets up, Olivia leans back, tilting Lizzie’s head up with a soft grip under her chin, “Look at me, sweetie.”

“I’m s-sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to–” she starts, but her hiccups interrupt, making it hard for her to speak. She frantically wipes her tears to no avail. The stream keeps going.

“I know, Liz. I know. None of this is your fault, understand? Listen to me,” Olivia tucks a lock of Lizzie’s long, straight hair behind her ear, “No matter what happens, I want you to know that your parents love you, your brothers and sisters, Simone. We all love you and we’re proud of you, honey. You’re doing incredible work—”

“Yeah, and destroying my family in the process. Oh god, I’m such an idiot,” Lizzie whines as she grabs the water from her girlfriend, drinking small sips as more tears fall down at the reminder of Eli. 

“You’re not destroying anything, Lizzie. Your family is strong. Look at all that happened the past couple of years. Eli has support from all of you. It’s…definitely a shock, but he’ll get through this,” Olivia squeezes Lizzie’s hands with hers, the both of them now facing each other. “And you are not to blame for any of it. What happens between your parents is between them. You are still their child. They would never blame you, either.”

Lizzie sniffles, her crying now reduced to a few hiccups here and there and swollen, red eyes instead of never ending tears. “Thank you, ‘Livia. I just feel so guilty still.”

Olivia brings her into a hug, rubbing her palm up and down Lizzie’s back. She whispers, “It’ll be ok, sweetie.”

Pulling away from each other, Olivia keeps gently stroking the young girl’s arms in soothing motions. Lizzie whispers with her head down, “How could she do that to Dad?”

At the mention of Elliot, Olivia shifts her gaze to the man pacing outside, phone up to his ear as he talks to Bell, presumably. She can see the anger still lingering through the tension in his posture. His furrowed brows and frequent clenching of his fist revealing more of his unpleasant mood. She witnesses him hang up after a few seconds, keeps pacing back and forth across the pavement outside. 

Olivia does not answer Lizzie. What could she say, really?

Instead, she rises from her seat.

“I’ll be right back, sweetheart.”

Olivia glances into the kitchen and, seeing that the others are still talking in whispers, she quickly grabs a blanket from the couch, opens the sliding door and steps outside.

She is huddled under a blanket when Elliot sees Olivia step outside. He hears her stop, waiting as he tries to gather himself (unsuccessfully), releasing quick puffs of misty air, grey clouds of condensation exiting through him in an uneasy rhythm. Even in such an open space, the world seems to shrink until it encircles where they both stand. 

A quiet, heavy air wraps around the two former partners. This scenario so familiar, even if the circumstances are dramatically foreign to them. Him in a quiet rage, barely stifled emotions threatening to expose themselves at any minute. Her, a calm, steady presence, patience and sympathy oozing from her in gentle words and heavy silence and easy eyes. Ready to jump at his defense, or attempt to temper his mood; either way, on his side, his partner. It’s like no time has passed at all.

“Bell called. She needs me back at the house.”

His voice breaks the long silence. It comes out strangled, like it hurts to speak every syllable. 

Olivia regards him for some time, prolonging the quietness. “Are you going to leave?”

“I…I really don’t know. I don’t know what to do, Liv.” He still feels like it’s not fully impacting him; something inside of him refusing to fully acknowledge the situation. 

Elliot shakes his head, sniffles. He rubs his hand across his face in a few motions. He stops pacing. Now he looks up at the sky, dejected, his anger contorting as he fails to hide his deeper emotion of heartbreak. Breaths expel from his body in quick pants. “What the hell am I going to do?”

Olivia steps closer to him, stopping in front of him, her back to the sliding door, separating them from the devastated party inside. She reaches for his hand. His tense knuckles and rough palm held in hers, reddened from the frigid air and his anxious movements. 

The wind blows heavily, whipping her hair into her face. His wet eyes are brought back down to her when she rubs her thumb repeatedly over his cold knuckles, the motion interrupted when he squeezes her fingers, the tight grip conveying a silent gratitude for her presence, her steadiness. 

He doesn’t know how she just gets more and more beautiful as they get older. He has felt the hints of his age with every twinge of his knee, with every line around his eyes, his neck, and his unexpected perp-chases leaving him winded more often. 

Time, as far as he can see, seems to have added a few wrinkles and lines on her face too, but it’s only been a gift to her, Elliot thinks. He especially loves the ones framing her mouth, imagining she had years to be happy—becoming a mother, watching her son grow, rising through the ranks and gaining friends along the way. And every mark and change he sees is just another reminder of what he missed, that he wants to stick around, and doesn't want to go a day without witnessing a new one appear on her face.

“I’m sorry, Elliot,” she says softly, warmth meeting his deep blue eyes before he tears his gaze away with a scoff. Their hands still joined between their bodies.

“So much for ‘casual hangout,’ huh?” he says with a wry grin. 

Olivia’s mouth curls into a slight smile, “I gotta come to these things more often.” He lets out a small laugh, a tear escaping before he could swipe it away. She drops his hand between them and reaches for his cheek, quickly brushing it off for him with her thumb. He grabs her hand before she can pull it away, squeezing it once before letting it go to adjust the slipping blanket on her shoulder, raising it up to cover her again before his arm drops back to his side. Her arms are crossed over her chest with her hands clutching the ends of the blanket to keep it from falling.

“I can’t tell you what to do, El,” her tone becomes serious, “but what I can tell you is that you’ve raised amazing kids. They’re strong and they love each other deeply. With time, they’ll be ok. Eli too.”

“I know…I–Thank you, Liv. And Noah, he’s–you have raised an incredible kid. Eli loves when he’s around. I’m glad he isn’t alone.”

“He was never going to be alone, Elliot. You have too many damn kids for that to happen. He’s got a big family to rely on,” she says casually and with absolute certainty, ignoring his praise of her parenting. Like nothing had transpired in the past hour, no questions about Eli’s paternity. Elliot finds comfort in her unwavering position that Eli really is still his son. 

Elliot doesn’t doubt it, of course. Doesn’t think of his boy as anything other than his son. He meant what he said to Kathy. He was a father in every way that mattered. But the lies, the betrayal he felt, it was all he could hang onto. 

“I know,” Elliot rubs his hands over his face, trying to wipe away his racing thoughts and the slight wetness under his eyes. “It’s just…he has been through so much in this family, a lot of it because of me...all my—” he shakes his head as he squeezes his eyes shut, the creeping sensation of shame making his eyes burn, “I’m afraid that…”

He trails off. What is he most afraid of?

Eli’s reaction is the answer that comes easiest to him. What he saw inside the house was a scared kid, his life completely shattered, and he already feels like Eli might pull away from him most of all.

Would he still see Elliot as his father? What if all the anger and resentment Eli felt when his mother fell ill comes back into his mind? What if this is something good for Eli? Would he want to find his biological father? Would he let him be part of his life still? Be his dad? 

Elliot knows that he is the only father Eli has ever known, but that might not be enough. He also knows that, with Eli practically being an adult, he can choose to seek out his biological family, choose to include them in his life in whatever way he sees fit, and Elliot wouldn’t even be able to stop it from happening.

He can’t help it. The doubts creep in, and his head starts to pound with worry. The most unrealistic, but distressing outcomes start circulating in his mind, feeling all too real.

He momentarily stops his frantic pacing to look through the backdoor, sees his wife in the kitchen, hugging herself as she wipes her cheeks and talks to their older kids. 

He clenches his fists tight.

Kathy releases shuddered breaths as her oldest daughter and son gently guide her body into the kitchen, cornering her as they whisper rapid-fire questions back and forth. Richard holds onto her forearm when she closes her eyes, not answering, and starts moving in unsteady motions like she might faint.

“Breathe, Mom. We’ve got you,” says Richard as he grounds her with his secure grip.

Maureen breaks off as her brother soothes their mother, giving her some space as she cleans up the shattered glass on the floor. Richard releases his hold on Kathy as he shuffles around the kitchen, pouring a glass of water for his panicked mother. When her breathing evens out, the questions start again.

“Mom, what…why did you do it? I thought you and Dad were good. Why did you hide this for so long?” Maureen asks, rising from the ground.

“I-I don’t…I was afraid because…” Kathy shakily inhales, trying to center her thoughts while guilt churns at her gut. “When I first left your father, I thought…I would be happier, separate from his anger and his silence. And I was better in a lot of ways. But four kids is a lot to handle and I was tired…I was working more nights, living with my mom, trying to find some balance in this new life I never expected for myself and just…in the middle of it all, this guy showed interest in me and I liked it. Made me feel wanted.”

As Maureen and Richard listen to her explanation, Kathy notices Lizzie entering the kitchen with her phone in her hand, after walking her girlfriend out of the loft, likely ensuring that she gets to her Uber safely. 

“Katie is on the phone. She says she wants to be aware of everything,” Lizzie says stiffly.

Kathy looks up, pausing, catches the way Lizzie avoids making eye contact with her and glues her puffy eyes to the floor instead, which makes the shame simmer in her belly. But she is grateful that her kids are at least hearing her side of the story. Even though she desperately needs the two people who aren’t there listening to be here with the rest of her kids. 

“Mom, tell us,” Mo gently requests.

With another deep breath, Kathy continues, “We, um…only went on a few dates. He was one of the first lawyers I called to handle the divorce with your dad, but…things escalated so quickly between us that I couldn’t have him as my attorney, obviously. I chose a different one and kept seeing this guy and w-we…” Her words become choked as she trails off. She swallows.

“But why not tell Dad? If it was serious, shouldn’t he have known?”

“B-but it wasn’t. It was never really serious. O-or maybe it was, but I didn’t want it to be. I broke it off with him, and then a few weeks later, Elliot and I...got back together.”

“‘The booty call’ as Katie used to tell us,” blurts Richard, which drives Maureen and Lizzie to swat at him. Katie mutters a solid yep through Lizzie’s phone. “What the hell? Katie said it, not me!”

Kathy releases a soft laugh at that, slightly rolling her eyes. “Yeah, when we got back together,” she shakes her head, “which…in the moment felt like we understood each other, for once. We were both feeling desperate, lonely, and needed comfort…I think he came home that day because he had one of his bad days at work and wanted to feel…I don’t know, safe? Cared for? And after, I didn’t feel as anxious about us…our future. Like even though it was a slip up, it showed that we were on the way to becoming comfortable with each other again.

“Before that night happened, we had talked more openly to each other, met up a few times to talk about our relationship. Your father was telling me that he wanted to fix things, to come back home, and that he loved his job and loved me, couldn’t bear to lose either. He signed the divorce papers and…I saw him trying, and I saw him doing better with you guys, with his job, with-with Olivia,” Kathy’s voice lowers at that final word, almost whispering her name like it carries the deeper truth of the matter, something sacred and unspoken. 

“We were finding solid ground. All I wanted was for him to talk to me because he always pulled away. Always…let his anger build and build until I started feeling angry all the time like him, just trying to get something honest out of him for once. And when he did finally talk, all I could think about was…this separation was a good thing, a necessary thing for us.”

“Wait…but if you were doing well, wouldn’t you want to get back together?” Maureen asks.

“Well, I said he was trying, but he wasn’t perfect. He kept telling me he would be available, but he was slipping again. Back into his job, into his moods. I guess…I just kept thinking that had it not been for our separation, we might have ended up hating each other. And, yeah, I was terrified of being a divorced mother of four and felt like my life had fallen apart, but I believed if he came back home, all that progress we made at rebuilding would be ruined by some inevitable bad day…and I would just be angry and resentful again. Plus your dad...” She trails off, hesitant to bring up her thoughts about Elliot desperately wanting to avoid repeating history. 

Kathy knows deep down that it was his intense devotion to duty and commitment that kept them together rather than true love. He had experienced a chaotic home life (her too) that he did not want to impose on his own family. It wasn’t some fairytale, and honestly she’ll always feel sad for that younger part of her that expected a different life, but she could never regret her life, her kids.

And even if they were not in love, Kathy knew that they still loved each other in a lot of ways. He was her friend before everything else and their love for each other had only grown with their marriage and as more kids came into their lives. Despite the difficulties of becoming young parents and having so much responsibility on their shoulders, it felt good that she, for the most part, had someone who she could depend on, who chose to be faithful to her, who would make sure that their family was solid and protected. 

And maybe she is more of an optimist, but she still thinks that love between them is there, in spite of everything that happened tonight. Or so she hopes. Because she isn't sure she can handle Elliot hating her, turning against her after so long. She doesn't want to be the reason their family is broken forever. 

No, it would be alright. He might not forgive her, but she knows he wouldn't ever cut her off, erase her from his life and separate her from their children. 

He wouldn't. Right?

Kathy realizes she has been quiet for too long. “Then I found out I was pregnant and all of my hesitance about getting back together flew out the window because I was so afraid of doing that on my own. And for all his faults, your father is a great dad. He loves you guys so much and I know that he would do anything for his kids. So I swallowed my pride, asked him to come home.”

The kids are silent for a moment, digesting all that their mother has told them. 

Lizzie speaks up. Her voice has an edge to it. “Why didn’t you tell Dad the truth?”

Kathy looks at Lizzie, answers, “I thought...he might not have come home if I told him. We were finding our footing, but we weren’t good like before. And I needed the security. I couldn’t be a single mom, and I didn’t see a relationship between me and that lawyer. I probably should have told, uh…Anthony, but I needed your dad to be the w-wonderful father that he is.”

Lizzie scoffs in disbelief. “So not only did you lie to Dad, but there is just some guy out there who doesn’t even know he has a kid.”

Before Kathy could reply, Maureen pipes up with an admonishment aimed at her sister. “Lizzie, ease up on Mom. We’re just trying to get the full picture–”

“Oh fuck that. She built up this whole lie because she was selfish! Do you really think Dad would have just dropped you out of his life for that? He loves you, he loves all of us like you said! I just…” Kathy watches as her daughter twists her mouth, resisting the urge to cry, which only makes her hurt more.

God, what did I do?  

Kathleen’s voice crackles from the phone, finishing the sentence that her sister couldn’t say, “I just don’t understand why you took the risk of keeping this secret and deciding for everyone. You just chose what would be easiest for you. Did you really think this wouldn’t come out?”

Kathy’s throat tightens as she sees Lizzie crying, surprised that her quietest girl is the one taking this so hard. Besides her youngest son, of course. “It wasn’t easy. None of it was. I had nights I couldn’t breathe, thinking about what I’d done, about what it might cost. But I-I did what I thought was best at the time. I was scared. I didn’t want to lose everything.”

Lizzie wipes at her face. “Well, I hope you’re ready for the fallout,” she says bitterly, “because I don’t see how we come back from this. You didn’t just lie to Dad—you rewrote Eli’s entire life. And I’m the fucking asshole who gave it away and now Eli’s locked in his room probably feeling so alone.”

Her voice cracks. Lizzie presses her palm against her mouth, trying to stifle the next sob, but it slips out anyway. “I didn’t mean to do this,” she says, her voice cracking. “I didn’t mean to ruin everything.”

“You didn’t ruin it, Liz,” Maureen says quietly. “This was always going to come out. Maybe not like this, but someday.”

Lizzie shakes her head. “No. No, not like this. Not at his fucking birthday party. Not in front of everyone. He looked at me like I broke him.”

“He’s scared,” Kathy says, taking a tentative step forward. “He doesn’t understand yet. But he will. You’re his sister. He loves you. He’ll forgive you.”

Lizzie finally lifts her eyes to meet her mother’s. “But will he forgive you?”

Kathy flinches like she’s been slapped. She doesn’t respond right away—doesn’t know how. Because the truth is, she’s been asking herself that same question for years. Every time she watched Eli smile at Elliot, every time he fell asleep on his father’s chest, every time they argued, or playfully spoke Italian to each other, or played soccer together. Every time she saw pieces of him in the boy he helped raise, pieces of him that weren’t carried through blood.

Maureen exhales slowly, running a hand through her hair. “We should check on him.”

“I’ll go," Richard finally perks up. “I'll make sure Noah’s good too. I’ll just sit outside his door if he doesn’t wanna talk. Let him know he still has us in his corner.”

He grabs a hoodie from the back of a chair and heads down the hallway, his footsteps careful and soft.

A silence settles in the kitchen—heavy, but no longer tense. Just sad.

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Kathy says after a long moment. “I know that sounds foolish now. But I’ve carried this every day for nineteen years, trying to protect all of you from it. And maybe that was wrong. I know that now. I just…” She swallows. “I didn’t know how to be brave enough to tell the truth.”

“Well,” Lizzie says, wiping under her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, “looks like you’re going to have to learn.”

Katie’s voice crackles faintly from the phone still on the counter. “I second that.”

Maureen shifts uncomfortably, leaning against the fridge, her eyes darting between them. “We’re here now, okay? We know now. So maybe we just take a breath. Figure out what comes next.”

But Kathy is still staring at Lizzie, who looks so much like her father when she’s angry—jaw clenched, stubborn, wounded.

“I’m sorry,” Kathy whispers, barely audible. “I’m so sorry.”

Lizzie looks away, jaw twitching. “That’s not gonna fix it.”

“No,” Kathy says. “But maybe it’s where we start. I need to talk to Eli…to your dad.”

Maureen chuckles sadly. “God, what the hell. What a night.”

Kathy looks toward the hallway, toward the locked door that hides her son and then is pulled away by the sound of the backdoor sliding open, Elliot coming into view like a flash, his steps loud and fast as he rushes to leave the apartment, barely glancing into the kitchen. But she sees Olivia grab at his arm, stopping him from running out. “It’s not over,” she says. “It’s barely even begun.”

Her voice snaps his attention away from the window. Elliot slowly releases the tension from his enclosed fists, only to feel the residual bite of his nails digging into his palms.

“What? Afraid of what, Elliot? Tell me…” Olivia’s eyes shine and he can feel all the sympathy and worry coming from her as his eyes lose focus for a moment and then fixate into the apartment again. He is getting too lost in his head. His eyes and his body start twitching erratically.

Elliot is suddenly thrust back into a memory. The case he was working on when Eli (literally) crashed into the world for the first time. A lost little boy named Tommy, and a rape/homicide that led to the discovery of a cheating wife; her husband becoming a casualty of Warner’s DNA test which proved his false paternity. 

Elliot remembers the emotional conversation he shared with the husband, Jake, all those years ago, after Elliot had accidentally let the secret spill from his mouth.

“What happens when he gets older? All he wants is his real father,” Jake says with worry. 

“There are plenty of adopted kids who don’t care about their biological parents, even the ones that do–”

“I didn’t adopt him. I watched my wife give birth to him, I cut the umbilical cord, he was mine!” Jake bursts into a fit of anger, heartache seeped into his tone.

“He still is,” Elliot replies quietly.

Elliot meant it. In his mind, nothing should change the relationship between Jake and Tommy. The secret shouldn’t have even been revealed in the first place, at least not coming from the loud, bickering detectives who were meant to focus on the murder of Tommy’s nanny.

All it would bring was hurt. That’s what he was trying to tell his partner when they argued. Why mess with the love the father and son so obviously shared? 

Olivia had emphasized that it was unfair for Tommy and Jake, both living in ignorance and unknowingly suffering from the consequences of Jake’s unfaithful wife, Leah. Elliot tried, but he just couldn’t understand what good could come from revealing such a horrible truth. 

Now? He doesn’t feel so sure. He just feels conflicted. He wishes he didn’t know. If he didn’t, they would be happily celebrating another year of Eli, sharing this moment with his family. Blissful ignorance. 

But would he be comfortable living with this lie? Would Eli feel a part of him was missing? Was it unfair to preserve this secret just for the sake of their family’s stability? Or to keep Eli as his son?

At the soft call of his name and the feeling of Olivia’s hand on his shoulder, Elliot pulls his gaze away, saying quietly, “I’m afraid that Eli might…push us away. Push me away. Now that…he knows of his real dad…” His voice catches as he says it. Like the words were never meant to be spoken aloud. 

“You are his real dad, Elliot. That doesn’t change because of…this. You were always the one to tell me that blood is not the only way to have family.” Olivia’s words are spoken with such conviction, but his mind is racing, not allowing them to stick around in his mind for long.

“It’s just…God, I can’t believe we are even having this conversation right now.”

He looks at his left hand, twisting his wedding ring around his trembling finger, pulling it off and sliding it back on, repeating that movement over and over.

“Look, Elliot, you need to remember that Eli is…he has been through a lot, probably more than most teenagers, but he is here,” she takes a pause, waving her hands away from them towards the house, gesturing as she speaks, “with all of us. He was smiling, a happy kid, entirely different from how he was last year. He is resilient, and that’s because of you and his family. That should tell you that he’s not going to run from this, from you. Give yourself some credit, El.” 

Elliot starts pacing, his shoes crunching the bit of snow that is on the ground.

“I’m just so angry at her…this lie…if she didn’t wake up…She was willing to die with that secret,” he scoffs with a shake of his head. “I wish it hadn’t come up at all.”

Deep down, Elliot wants to believe that it is better that both he and his son know. Even if it would have avoided so much pain and hurt to keep this secret buried. And he would never blame his daughter for how it came up either. He hopes she doesn’t carry guilt for being the messenger. 

It might be better for it to be known sooner rather than years down the road, when Eli’s identity is wholly shaped by being a Stabler and his world is shattered, shaken (more than it is now). Either by his mom clearing her conscience, or through accidentally discovering the truth if he has his own kids.

At least now, Eli does not feel the pressure to solve this on his own as most adults would. He hopes so, at least. He’s still a kid, his identity is still evolving.

He has his family.

Another part of his talk with Jake disrupts his train of thought.

“You must have kids,” Jake says.

“Yeah.”

“What if you found out that one of ‘em wasn’t yours, after all the years of hugging them, and holding their hands, you know, wiping their tears. How would you feel?”

At the time, he didn’t know how to answer. It was a question that haunted him, instilled a flicker of anxiety within him. He thought about it all day, so much that he went home to Kathy that night and carefully tried to ask her about their son’s paternity without really saying it out loud, knowing that their period of separation was not an easily explored topic between the two of them. Too risky. Too raw. Too awkward. But she said it out loud for him. 

“What’s the point of all this, Elliot? Are you asking if this is your child?”

In retrospect, Elliot could see how his wife would treat his suspicion as ridiculous. Offensive, even. Despite all their faults, Kathy knows her husband. Knows that him asking her wasn’t coming from a place of insecurity or a lack of trust. Knows that his mind is actually not at home with her but miles away, back at the precinct, stuck on a tough case.

The gravity of Jake’s question lays heavy in his heart and head. How would you feel? He remembers Jake’s devastation, the frustration and anger he felt towards his disloyal wife. His life and Tommy’s forever changed simply because of her boredom in her marriage. Right now, all he can feel is the sizzle of anger burning deep in his gut. Fear for Eli. Fear of the uncertainty of his family. He couldn’t answer at the time, but he understands now. 

That familiar spark of anger transforms into a full flame, burning through his gut and making his breathing much harsher with every exhale. How Kathy could act so offended and receive his question with incredulity, knowing the truth and hiding it well, was beyond cruel, Elliot thought. So unlike her (or so he thought), making the stab of her betrayal sink deeper into his chest.

He just can’t understand why.

“I think it’s better that it did come up,” Olivia says after letting him pace a few lines back and forth, deep in his thoughts, only interrupting once she saw his face flickering with traces of irritation.

Elliot lets out a short, empty laugh. “Why? Why is it better? Because I’m at a loss here, Liv. I don’t see any good coming from this at all! All I saw in there was hurt! Eli’s hurt. I’m—She fucking lied and for years made me feel like…” He trails off after his outburst, becoming less quiet but his words still armed to the teeth with fury. “Maybe my wife has a clear fucking conscience now and my s-son can run to some second family when I–”

“Elliot, stop. Eli’s not going to—”

It’s all too much. He wants the hurt to go away. 

“How do you know?! What the hell do you know, huh?” Elliot shouts. “Please don’t try to fucking…placate me right now. Just back off!”

He sees Olivia stagger, her eyebrows furrowing as she reels back, before she quickly adjusts, hardens her face. 

“Don’t pull this shit with me, Elliot. I get that you’re angry, you have every right to be, but don’t take it out on me.” Her voice cracks only slightly before she forces it back into steel, refusing to let him notice his effect on her. But he does. 

“Just…” He reigns it in a little, taking a deep breath but still radiating with rage, his hands fisting against his sides. “I need you to back off, okay? I’m fine. I’ll deal, make sure Eli’s fine, my kids.

"Oh, okay. Right. This is you being fine—” Olivia gestures at him in exasperation.

“Yes, I’m fine. I can’t—Look, Bell needs me. I gotta go.” Elliot shakes her off as Olivia grabs at him, attempting to keep him from retreating back to his job, running from this situation that he clearly does not want to face. Don’t run, stop running, she keeps pleading as he reaches the sliding door, heading inside.

The swish of the door as it opens allows the rush of the outside’s chilled air to swoop in, as the hushed voices coming from the rest of the family inside bleeds out from the loft. 

Elliot avoids looking at the kitchen. Even though he was just outside, it all feels too suffocating. He just needs to leave. He needs to work. A distraction. No, he’s not running. He just won’t let his rage inflict any more damage on their already broken family.

But before he can even grab his keys (which—where are they?), he feels a strong, familiar grip on his arm. 

“El, just stop. Please. Stop. I don’t think you should be leaving right now. You really shouldn’t work.” 

“Liv, I’m fine. I—I gotta go." 

"Dad?"

He freezes. 

He completely missed the sound of the door opening. Elliot’s widened eyes meet Eli’s sad, red face. Dickie is on the ground, his back against the wall next to Eli’s door, but he quickly rises to his feet when the door opens.

“You’re leaving?”

His son’s voice sounds absolutely ripped. Like there is no moisture left in his mouth. No strength, all shaky. Quiet. Devastated.

Behind him, he sees Noah creep out from his bedroom. He thought he might run to his mother’s side, but he stays with Eli, his arms crossed over his little chest, looking at the older kid with a tinge of worry on his face. But still a silent, calm presence beside him. Standing guard, a kid-sized sentry. 

Elliot’s tense posture loosens just slightly, feeling better knowing his son has someone looking out for him. He wants to be the one to soothe and protect him, shield him from the pain caused by his mother’s secrets. 

But his skin feels raw, his muscles rigid, his mind running as fast as his heart is beating, his blood pulsing through his veins. If he doesn’t move, he might hit something. Break something. Well, another something.

He shakes his head, trying to stave off the instinct to react with his fists. “I, um. I got called into work.” Feeling the grip on his arm squeeze tighter, he whips his head to Olivia, sees that she is looking over at the boys, eyes bouncing back and forth between the two younger ones. She doesn’t like that I said that, he guesses. Not now that Eli is obviously needing the comforting presence of his dad, not his absence. 

He sniffles. “Eli, I…”

Elliot turns back, hearing movement from the kitchen interrupt what he was going to say. Olivia’s hold on him tightens, forcing him to look back at her. She quickly tells him, “Elliot, I really think you should stay. Just…be here. For them. They need you here. Eli needs you.” She finally reels back from holding him when Kathy and the rest of his kids walk over to where he stands. 

“Noah, honey, let's go home now.” Elliot sees Noah glance at Eli once more, whispering a small Bye, Eli before moving away, back to his mother’s side. He feels a tug at his heart when Eli actually smiles—a small one, but it’s genuine—at Noah before saying goodbye to him and Olivia.

“Call me if you need anything, ok?” Olivia directs it at Eli (who gives her a slight nod and a hint of a smile), but he knows she meant that for the rest of them too.

Olivia leaves from the tense space with her son silently walking behind her. Elliot follows her closely, eyeing her until she and her boy are gone from his apartment. He feels their absence immediately.

“Eli, are you ok?” 

He doesn’t know how. But somehow Elliot was able to keep himself rooted to the ground after hearing his wife ask such a pointless question. 

Of course he isn’t ok. His whole life was a lie.

“Mom, maybe that’s not the best way to start,” mumbles Maureen quietly. 

Elliot watches as Eli’s demeanor shifts in an instant. He glares at his mother, a tempered fire burning from his eyes directly at her, the puffy redness of his face accentuating the heat of his anger. “Oh, yeah. Just great, Ma. Got any other shit to say? More lies?”

“Eli, don’t speak to me that way. As upset as you are right now, I am still your mother. I get it, Ok? I am in the wrong here. But I just want to talk to you about—”

“You know what? I really don’t care what you have to say anymore actually.” Eli looks to Elliot. This time his voice is clearer, harder, but with less anger. “Are you leaving, Dad?”

At Eli’s question, Kathy whips her head to Elliot, her expression accusatory. “Seriously, Elliot?”

He opens his mouth, but before Elliot could answer, Kathy moves closer to Eli. “I owe you an explanation, Eli. You deserve that and way more. Please just…let’s talk, ok? I just wanna talk–”

Eli’s voice becomes louder. “I don’t want to talk to you! I can’t even be near you right now.”

A chorus of Eli, just listen and Hear mom out comes from his siblings. But Kathy holds a hand up to them, shaking her head.

“I...I get that, I do. But you can’t shut me out. We don’t have to talk right now. But we should talk. I know you…might have questions,” Elliot hears Eli scoff at this. “Both of you,” Kathy finishes quietly, looking over at Elliot, but he just avoids her attempt at eye contact.

Elliot feels his right eye twitching. He shuts his lids tightly, tries to shake it off. 

Eli ignores her, looks at him pointedly. “Just tell me if you’re leaving.”

All of them go silent as they wait for him to speak. 

There are so many things he wants to say. Starting with reassurances to his son, his baby boy. I love you. I love that you’re my son. I don’t care about anything else. I love you. I love that you’re mine. You'll always be my son. I could never, ever leave you. I’m still your dad. I’ll always be your dad. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.

But that’s not what he actually says.

“I am. I…I have to go. They need me.” 

Elliot can’t look up. He doesn’t want to face the looks of disappointment from his family. He can already sense it. He just wishes his hands would stop fucking shaking and the pounding in his head would ease up.

Too much. Too much. It’s all just too much.

He sniffles, inhales and exhales a shaky breath. Elliot keeps his head down as he walks up to Eli, acting before thinking. He grabs his face, and surprisingly he doesn’t pull away from him. “Look at me, son.”

At that, Eli looks down, resisting the soft request. His face is scrunching as he tries not to cry. A tear rolls down his face anyway.

“Look at me, Eli. Please. I need you to listen.” Finally, he looks up, his gaze tear-stricken, fragile, unrecognizable brown eyes looking back at Elliot. His throat tightens. Tell him you love him. “I have to leave, but I am not leaving you, alright?”

No, not good enough, Elliot. You’re fucking this up.

Eli shakes off the hands on his face, his vulnerable expression shifts into a scowl. “Just go.” 

Something awful and heavy fills him. He wishes he was capable of saying more, all that he meant to say but couldn’t; something that could take away the look on his son’s face. But the words are lodged inside of him and his breath is frozen in his chest.

“Well, what are you waiting for? They need you, right? Go. Leave!” Eli raises his voice. But Elliot’s stuck. Still.

When he doesn’t move, he sees his son walk with purpose to the kitchen, brushing past Lizzie and Maureen who are standing next to each other, both with sad expressions on their faces. He hears the jingle of his keys as Eli picks them up and walks back to his dad, shoving them to his chest. “Go ahead. I won’t stop you. I’m used to it by now,” Eli says with a bitter tone, walking to his room again and slamming the door behind him.

Elliot flinches from the words and from the push of his keys on his chest, stumbling back an inch. He swallows, looks down at his phone which buzzes with a text from Bell: ETA? IAB is already here. 

He puts his phone away. Right. He forgot that's why he had to go. As if this night couldn’t get fucking worse.

Sliding his hands over his face, trying to rub off the guilt and anger with no success, Elliot turns to the rest of them, strengthening his voice. “Give him his space. Don’t push. I’m talking to you,” he looks harshly at his wife. She clenches her jaw before attempting to speak. But he holds his hand up to her and looks away, back to his kids. “When he’s ready, he’ll talk. But don’t let him forget that you’re his family even…” He falters, “even if I’m not. I have to go.”

“Dad, don’t say that. Don’t leave.” He can’t even tell which one of his kids says that with the sound of his heartbeat pulsing in his ears.

"I can't believe you, Elliot. Is work seriously more important right now?" But he knows exactly who said that.

“I have to go. Need to make a statement.” 

And then he walks out of his apartment with heavy steps, but it feels more like he’s running.

Chapter Text

“It’s not true. It’s not true!”  

Eli shakes his head rapidly, putting his hands over both sides like it might muffle the panicking thoughts in his mind. 

His steps are frantic as he storms to his bedroom, the door shutting loudly behind him as he presses all his weight against it, fumbling with the knob until he hears the telltale clicks of the lock. 

Eli squints his eyes shut, his chest convulses with a noiseless sob, only a whimper leaving him as he struggles to keep his emotions at bay. Something hot and heavy and dull settles inside of him. He thought he had already suffered the worst heartbreak in his life, but he can honestly say he feels just as broken as he did then.

The sensation overwhelms him and suddenly he is not in his bedroom anymore, but 4,000 miles away, stock still, his phone held up against his ear only by sheer adrenaline as he hears his dad brokenly tell him —

You need to come home.

— but wasn’t he already there? —

You need to come to New York, he meant. It's your mom. I...You need to come as soon as you can, son.

That familiar feeling washes through him again, stronger as the memory invades his senses. The nausea hits right as he feels another choking sob in his throat. 

God, it’s so hard to breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. 

He feels like he’s free falling. Down and down and down, he spirals until he loses sight from the intensity of his panic, and all sound is ripped except for the deafening hum in his ears. The tension is rising in his body, forcing him to stagger to his bed and collapse onto the soft sheets. He puts his head between his knees with his hands behind his head, panting heavier with each terrible thought that runs through his mind. 

“What the fuck? Oh god, what the fuck?” 

He can barely recognize his own voice. His grip on the sheets wrinkle and tighten with the strength of his fingers. He thinks it should hurt, but he can’t feel anything, can’t focus on anything except the echoed thoughts in his head.

My dad isn’t my dad. 

My dad isn’t my dad. 

My dad isn’t my dad.

His stomach is turning, and he just barely manages to swallow the bile creeping into his throat by tilting his head back up and frantically wiping his tear-ridden face with his quivering hands. 

He doesn’t know how he can come back from this. 

He feels unmoored, untethered to the ground, and completely fucking scared. 

And the worst part is, he’s alone.

They won’t see me as family anymore. My dad won’t even want me. 

It’s not just sadness sinking into his gut, but anger. He wants to fight against the doom and gloom of it all and just scream. Do something—anything that will make this feeling go away, that will make the hurt fizzle out into nothing. 

He tries to calm himself down, trying his hardest to ignore the urge to slam his head into the nearest surface just to shut his brain up. He thinks of his caring sisters who have tried to help him through some rough anxiety attacks in the past. 

Katie’s voice sounds in his ears; faint, a soft guide, his only source of gravity keeping him grounded, as she once did before when he was struggling to cope with the trauma from the violence inflicted on his mother. 

Let’s breathe, ok? I know you feel like you are outside of your body and that’s a really scary feeling, but your brain is trying to distance itself from all of the stress and emotions. It’s instinct, it’s protective. When it gets that intense, try to grab onto something, squeeze my hands, touch the wall. 

He grasps the sheets beneath him again. Clenching. Squeezing. 

Doesn’t matter what, just feeling things around you, even saying out loud what you’re holding on to can bring you back to yourself. 

“Sh-sheets. Bed.” He slides one of his hands up further on the soft bed, closer to his pillow, identifying his touches out loud. His fingertips glide across a wire hanging by the edge of his bed. “Charger.” He’s tracing it until he reaches the hard surface of his bedside table. 

That’s good. You’re ok. You’re doing great, Eli. Just relax, keep squeezing my hands. Do you feel this here? Tell me what it is. 

“T-table,” he shakily speaks, and he repeats and cycles through all that he traces over until the dark clouds clear in his mind. 

He looks up, and he regrets it instantly. Because on that wooden surface next to his lamp is a framed picture of him with his mom and dad back in Rome—silly grins on their faces as a younger Eli looks overcome with laughter, traces of flour in his dark hair, holding up strings of freshly rolled pasta in the air, a few of them falling out of his hands and frozen in mid-air with the picture capture, and the two of his parents have their long noodle strings hanging from their hands as they playfully pretend to drop it over his head. 

He flinches, closing his eyes tight, and grasps the sheets tightly once again. “Sheets. Sh-sheets. My be-ed. My-my bed. Pillo— Fuck, ” he exclaims as he gets worked up again, a storm of emotion brewing once again as a sob wracks through his body. 

It’s alright, you’re doing good, Eli. Listen to my voice, you’re safe, you’re loved, I’m here just for you, ok? We can just sit and breathe as long you need to. I’ve got you. 

And suddenly it’s not working at all. 

The gentle voice in his head only twists the knife deeper, penetrating his ribs and lungs so hard he feels like he can’t take a breath without a sharp pain stabbing at him. Because the kind, encouraging words from his sister only serve as a reminder that it’s just her voice. It’s not real. She isn’t here with him, sitting on his bed and talking him down. None of his family are. They don’t care. 

They don’t want you anymore. 

“Mmmm–No. ”

They don’t want you. You’re alone. Your dad doesn’t want you. You’re not even ‘his’ to want.

“No. That’s–No.”

You’re more trouble than you are worth. Your family is broken now and it’s all because of you. You’re alone. 

He jolts up, grabbing the frame on his side-table, his legs are moving in strides over to his desk and before he knows it, he is slamming it face down, hard enough that he hears the glass break from the impact. 

You’re alone. 

He freezes with a hard stare at his hand resting on top of the frame. Breathing unsteadily, he lifts it up, leaving behind a few pieces of glass. 

You’re alone.

He looks at the picture in his hands and his face scrunches up in despair. The smiling faces just mocking him as his own mouth is downturned and open with every shuddering exhale of his ragged cries. 

I’m alone.

He can’t look at it anymore. He settles on the floor with the broken frame clutched tightly against his chest, his body uncomfortably resting along the small edge of his desk. He couldn’t look more pathetic if he tried. 

Weak. Broken. No wonder your family—

A knock sounds at the door, pulling him back in an instant.

“Eli? Can I come in?”

Noah. 

He freezes. Eli’s mind goes blank, paralyzed for a moment with inaction. He doesn’t want to face what’s on the outside of his room, can hardly stand the thought of anyone seeing him like this despite his worst fears of abandonment creeping in only seconds ago. 

But then he’s moving before he even contemplates why and stops right at the door. He takes a deep breath and cracks the door open. Avoiding the looks of his family, he quickly retreats back to where he was on the ground, picking up the frame and placing it on his desk, face down. He doesn’t want to draw any attention to the mess he made, so he rushes back to his bed. 

He slumps over with his hands wringing together nervously between his knees, letting Noah slip past the small opening without greeting him. Eli hears the door gently close and is grateful to hear only the steps of the younger boy.

“You can be in here, but I don’t want to talk,” Eli says, breaking the momentary silence. He is trying to soften his voice, but his anger still leaks through, making his tone seem rough. Don’t be mean. He didn’t do anything wrong. “I just…can’t right now, Noah.”

Noah is still by the shut door from what Eli can tell, only hearing the very quiet shuffling of his friend’s feet. But after he speaks, the boy comes closer to the bed, stepping onto the small step, standing next to him as he sits, crouched and devastated. 

He looks up at Noah, glancing at his fidgety hands, his awkward stance, the bounce of his curls as he nods in acceptance at what he just said to him. But Noah doesn’t move. So Eli drops his head again, trying to focus on quieting the pulse of his heartbeat in his ears, taking deeper breaths, gripping the sheets beneath him like a lifeline. A few tense minutes go by until the silence is finally disrupted by a timid voice.

“You know,” Noah starts quietly, finally moving from his rooted spot to sit tentatively next to Eli, “when I’m upset, I like to play video games to feel better...like a distraction. And my mom lets me play as much as I want.”

Eli lets out a scoff, shakes his head as a small lift of his mouth forms a semblance of a smile. 

Such a kid. 

A sweet, smart, and unusually emotionally intelligent one, but still a kid.

He wishes all of his inner turmoil and family problems can be soothed by a few hours of mindless playing. If only it were that simple, that easy to fix. 

“I get it, you just came in here to hog my switch, huh?” Eli says, ribbing the kid at his attempt to ‘help.’

A creeping blush flushes the boy’s face. “N-no! I swear! I just—”

“Don’t mind me, I’ll just have my crisis on this corner of the bed. You can be over there and try to finally beat my Time Trial record in Twisted Mansion—”

“I–No! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We don’t have to, Eli. That was a s-stupid—”

“I’m kidding, dude. C’mon, let’s play.” He wipes his nose with his sleeve before he gets up and walks to his desk where his switch is charging next to his laptop, completely ignoring the frame that was just violently wreaking havoc on his mental health. 

He grabs the device, along with the two small red and blue remotes packed inside a drawer (damn, he hopes they’re charged; he forgot to plug them in with his switch). The boy still looks uncomfortable, like he regrets making the suggestion. Eli doesn’t want him to feel bad, and he only wants his time with Noah to be easy and fun like it usually is. 

Besides, he thinks, I’m willing to try anything to just not think and chill the fuck out right now.

“I have to be honest, Noah. The main reason I invited you tonight was just so I could kick your ass at Mario Kart,” Eli says as he sits next to Noah, a quick swipe of his hand over the kid’s curls slightly rears his head back.

Noah smiles, “You wish. Even if it’s your birthday, I’m not letting you win.”

The boys adjust themselves so that they are both seated against the headboard, their legs stretched out in front of them as the switch is rested against a pillow in between them. Eli feels a little better with the distraction, his panic mostly subsided and the tremble in his entire body now reduced to his hands (making him finish in 12th place in their first game, much to Noah’s amusement).

The comforting sound of the upbeat music and the tapping of his and Noah’s fingers on the small remotes is what he tries to focus on. Every time his mind wanders to his more unpleasant reality, he just zeroes in on the silly characters and the chaos of the race. 

Huh. This is actually…working? 

At least, it was, until Noah apparently decided that one more game with him in first place was satisfying enough. 

“Are you really ok, Eli? That was kind of a lot,” he says, fidgeting with his remote.

“Not talking about it, remember?” Eli says snippily. Please just drop it.

“I just—” Noah starts, but the boy takes one look at Eli’s scowling face pointed at the game, avoiding Noah’s attention, and stops. He nods his head, acquiescing with a sigh before continuing onto their next round.

He doesn’t remember this road being so freaking difficult.

Noah weaves and winds through Rainbow Road, the very distracting bright colors and slanted curves of the tricky track making it impossible to remain in the top three spots—top five, even. 

Because he is in 7th place right now. And he feels like he’s been giving it his all.

He tries hard to stay still and not wiggle around, not instinctually follow the direction of his kart, like his own body will improve his movement on screen. 

He eventually bumps his kart against a speedy Toadette, causing him to fly off the road, slowing him down as he resets back on the road. He grunts quietly in frustration, which makes Eli huff out a laugh. Noah becomes distracted after that, gaze landed on Eli’s still slightly puffy face once he hears the sound from the older boy.

Eli did say he didn’t want to talk. 

“Did I ever tell you about when my mom first told me I was adopted?”

He doesn’t want to upset Eli, but he can’t just let it go and ignore everything that happened. He knows from some of his dance friends that he can be a bit nosy sometimes; has a reputation for being a bit of a chatterbox. But he’s not looking for gossip—the stuff he heard in the living room was big enough ‘news’ for him to have that small, nosy part of him settled. 

He can admit, he does love to talk; and if that makes people feel comfortable telling him their secrets or their feelings, who is he to fight against that? He’ll be the kind of friend Eli needs in any way he wants, even if it is just his chatty presence. 

What did Mom say to him once? 

It’s hard for people to open up. Even for you, right? Sometimes being a good friend is all about listening to what they have to say, but if they don’t always feel comfortable talking about the hard stuff, just tell them something about you.

Noah can definitely do that.

“I was like…really, really angry at her. Like that was Top Ten Worst Noah Benson Moments, honestly. Probably for my mom, too. I was mean to her for way too long.” He knew her heart was in the right place, knows his mom only ever wanted what was best for him. But it’s sometimes hard to understand the choices she makes out of “protection” or “love” for him even now, let alone at six years old.

“It wasn’t even…I was the one who asked her about—Do you remember when I told you about Grandma Sheila? How she took me to the cabin and then the cops came and she ended up in like a hospital?”

Eli hums, glances at him quickly to acknowledge he was listening. But his thumbs keep moving as he narrowly avoids crashing his Shy Guy into another kart. 

Noah continues, barely playing the game now, “I know now that what she did was wrong, but before that, I really wanted to know her. I loved spending time with her, and my mom told me she was my grandmother. Not her mom, which…now I feel dumb for not really asking more questions because—whatever, I was really little. It felt nice to have someone else to call my family because it was just me and my mom for so long. I love Fin and Amanda too, but it just felt, I don’t know…different. Nice. She told me about Ellie, but I didn’t really think about who she really was. Sheila just said that she loved me. And then I told my mom about Ellie and she just said the same thing. That she loved me, but that was it.”

He adjusts himself, now sitting criss-cross on the bed and setting the remote down in front of him as he finishes in last place. Eli sets his remote down too. He keeps staring ahead at the character select screen. But he is silent, listening. Good.  

“After everything that happened, I brought Ellie up again. I asked my mom who she was. That’s when she told me that…” Noah pauses, swallowing loudly and Eli looks at him, “that she was Sheila’s daughter. I could tell that my mom wasn’t feeling good about us talking about it, but I just kept asking questions.”

Noah stops, his mind going back to the first time he found out the truth of his origins.

<<...>>

“How did she know me? Was she family like Grandma Sheila?”

Sitting on the floor, the two Bensons are clicking together tiny LEGO pieces, freestyling their creations. He feels tired, but doesn’t want to sleep again.

His mother lets out a big sigh. She looks tired, too. But he already started asking her questions about his grandma and Ellie. He had a scary dream about Sheila taking him away and never seeing his mom again. He just wants to know why she would do such a bad thing.

“Ellie was Sheila’s daughter. They, uh, fought a lot. They didn’t get along very well, and Ellie ran away from home when she was a teenager,” his mom says softly, brushing his curly hair with her fingers.

“Ran away? From her mom? Why?”

“Some people just, even if they love each other, can get really mad at their family and it makes them react badly sometimes.”

“So…how did she know me?”

Noah sees his mom shift to face him, her eyes are watery, but he doesn’t know why. Maybe she’s just tired. She grabs his hand. 

“Before I tell you, I want you to know, Noah, that I love you so much and this is a very big story I'm telling you. So whatever you feel, just remember that I will always love you no matter what and that I'm so happy to be your mom.”

Noah just nods, kind of nervous by how serious his mom sounds, and he feels her hold onto his hand tightly and he lets her, squeezing her back whenever she would squeeze his. 

“So…you know your friend Jordan from school? He–um, he was adopted by his parents. Do you know what that means?”

He scrunches his face. Why are we talking about Jordan?

“Yeah. He was in someone else’s tummy, and his mommy and daddy chose him as their baby,” he says.

Noah sees his mom close her eyes as she takes a deep breath and feels her squeeze him really tight. She smiles a little bit too.

“Yes, exactly. Jordan had a mommy who gave birth to him, but the mommy that he has right now isn’t his ‘biological’ mommy. So he didn’t come from her body.”

“But what happened to his other mommy? Did she not want him?”

“Um–No, it wasn’t like that. I’m not sure what happened with his biological mommy but…” His mom takes a deep breath, “sometimes there are mommies and daddies who might be in trouble, or too young, or have…no one to help care for their babies. So they decide, or someone else decides for them, that the baby would be safer and happier if they were raised by another family.”

She waits as he tilts his head, probably waiting for him to say something. But he keeps listening. 

“Usually the people who adopt these babies have no babies of their own, but some of them do. And no matter what, they all just want to love and care for this baby like they are their real baby. Some families are chosen. Like you said, Jordan’s mommy and daddy chose him. Not just family because they came from their bodies. Does that make sense, my love?”

Noah takes it in for a moment, connecting a few LEGO pieces quietly before saying, “Yeah. I think I get it. They still love Jordan a lot though, right?”

His mom nods at him before continuing, “They do. Very much. It doesn’t matter if they didn’t have him the way most other kids are born. Jordan is their son and they don’t love him any differently than how other parents love their kids.” 

She touches his cheek with a warm smile. He smiles back but he settles with a question. “So…what does that have to do with our story?”

“Well, Noah…Ellie was your biological mommy. And I chose you as my baby.”

His stomach hurts now. “What?” His LEGO pieces now forgotten on the ground.

“I found you. In a drawer. You were so small and…I knew from the first time I held you that you were so, so important to me. Like my heart was so full and warm when I saw you, even though I just met you.” He feels his throat tighten. He wants to cry. “Ellie was…in trouble. Going through a lot. We couldn’t find her and we didn’t even know she was your mom until after I took you in.”

She stops. He can only stare at the ground and hold his knees up against his little chest as he listens. He feels his mom reach over to try to wipe the tears off his cheeks, but he ducks his head with a whine.

“I know that must be hard to hear. I…Noah, honey, I wish that I could have told you a long time ago–”

“I’m–I didn’t come from your body?”

“No…You came from Ellie’s body. But that doesn’t change that I am your mom. That I am so happy to be your mom and I love you more than anything in this world.”

“So I’m not yours?”

She sighs, “Sweet boy, you are mine. You are my son. Never doubt that. I just wanted to wait a bit longer to tell you because I want to protect you. I never wanted to hide that from you. I’m actually proud that this is your story—our story. But Ellie is, uh…a very complicated part of your story that I think you still might be too young to hear.”

He shakes his head rapidly, “No. I want to know. You have to tell me. D-Did she throw me away? She didn’t want me? D-Did you take me away from my real mom?”

“No, No! Noah, sweetie. It wasn’t like that at all,” his mom says. She tries to reach for him, but he pulls away.

“You lied! You lied to me. I don’t want to—”

And he starts breathing really hard and tries pushing her away when she wraps her arms around him. But she holds him tight, rubbing his back and shushing him. He hears her soft voice cycle the same words to him until he calms down, “I know. I know, sweetie. It’s gonna be alright.”

<<...>>

Noah looks up to see Eli staring back at him with a sad expression. 

“How old were you?”

“I was six.”

“That must have been hard.” 

“Yeah. I freaked out,” Noah continues, scratching at his head, “but once I calmed down, I just remember feeling mad. And hurt. I remember going to my room and crying for a long time. I said some mean stuff to her, yelled at her, I called her a liar,” Noah looks pointedly at Eli, who looks away, only slightly abashed. 

“My mom let me be angry for a while and kept telling me that it was fine if I wanted to know more, that she would be honest with me about the adoption thing. And obviously I kept bugging her about it. I wanted to know more and I trusted her to tell me the truth. But she asked me to be patient about knowing the full story, like the part about my dad. I still don’t really know about him and I’m kinda scared to find that out because…well, it must be bad if she still thinks I’m not old enough to know, right?”

He ends with a nervous little shrug. They both go quiet, digesting Noah’s story. 

“What about the McCanns?” Eli asks. “Did that change how you felt?”

“How I felt about what? My mom?”

“I guess like…I don’t know. Was it weird connecting to that part of you when it was just you and your mom? When that was all you knew?”

Noah sits and thinks about Eli’s question. He never really thought too deeply about the McCanns, honestly. Curiosity drove him to send his DNA out into that ancestry website (thanks to Evan, one of the few boys in his dance class who rambled and let it spill that his older sister had sent out her DNA with her boyfriend to find out if they shared a common relative, which was…yucky to hear. Noah hoped that it wasn’t true for their sake).

Excitement was the dominant feeling when he remembers first discovering he had a half brother. It spilled over in waves when he finally ended up telling his mother, and he waited until he was sure there was someone to even look for; he didn’t want her to stress about it, or think this was like the Sheila situation all over again. 

“It wasn’t weird. I was just excited, you know, to maybe have more people in my family that were blood related…” Noah trails off, realizing that even though his mom seemed fine meeting the McCanns, he actually doesn’t know how she truly feels about them, or about him meeting his half brother. He was caught up in the moment when he told her about his newfound discovery, but he didn’t miss the weird look on her face when he said he wanted to meet his ‘real’ family. He frowns, a pang of guilt traveling through him for being so careless about his mom’s feelings. 

“But Eli don’t get me wrong. I love my mom. I am so happy to be part of her family. And I know our type of family shouldn’t be any different than others, but I think it is more special…because she chose me to be hers. And after I found out—I got upset, I know—But I chose her to be my mom too.”

A hard lump forms in his throat as he talks about his mom. He thinks he might have to give her a long overdue hug once they finally get home. 

“And you forgave her?” Eli asks after falling silent for a short minute.

“I did. It took me a while, but I did. I think…I think I was okay once she started talking to me about it a little more. Like she wasn’t trying to hide that part of me once she told me. And she still loved me. She didn’t treat me any differently, you know?”

Noah catches Eli shifting on the bed, leaning back against the headboard with his eyes closed. “It’s not the same.”

He waits, thinking Eli might have more to say. When the silence stretches, Noah jumps in. “It’s not. You have so many people in your family. Like too many.”

Eli scoffs, “But I don’t, do I? They aren’t my family anymore.”

“That’s not true. Did you not hear like any part of what I just said?” He rolls his eyes. Teenagers, he thinks. So drama. I hope I don't end up like that. “Do you think my mom isn’t my ‘real’ mom because she didn’t have me?”

“No, but it’s different. She raised you–”

“Elliot didn’t raise you?” Noah says with raised eyebrows, his tone leaking with more attitude with each quick rebuttal.

“He–Yes, he did, but I’m trying to say—” Noah hears his exasperated tone getting louder before he stops, releases that burst of energy with a sigh. 

“You said that Olivia chose you. She knew where you came from and she chose to be your mom. My dad didn’t choose me. Not really. He thought that he was my real—sorry—my biological parent, so he raised me as his son because he had no other choice. But if my mom just told him the truth…” Eli’s breath hitches, “I mean, how do I know he would’ve wanted me? Or would have raised me the same as the other kids?”

Eli’s voice is shaky. The words are coming out with a false strength. He thought by now all of the water in his body would be dried up from all of his crying. But he’s surprised to feel the warm drip of tears trailing down his face.

Noah doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even get a word in once the dam breaks, and out flows Eli’s heartbreaking stream of thoughts, finally releasing all that he had tangled up inside of him. 

“You know…I always kind of felt disconnected from my family. Mo, Lizzie, Katie, Dickie…all of them. I thought it was just…the constant moving around, the distance, even the age difference. I hardly saw them after a certain point in my life. I only really saw them on holidays and family shit like that, talked on the phone. And when I did see them, they would always talk about the past, stuff I didn’t understand because I was too young or didn’t even experience it. I just…always felt like an outsider. I guess it’s good to know that I wasn’t crazy. That there was a real reason why I felt that way,” he ends bitterly. “And my dad…” Eli’s words die in his throat.

If you were to ask him only a few years ago if he ever had any problems with his dad, he would've said no.

When they lived in Italy, his dad was actually pretty mellow; nowhere was the angry, overbearing man that Dickie and his other siblings had sometimes experienced in their teenage years. 

He would work long hours, sure. There was no denying that he spent some time away doing jobs out of the country. And he would definitely have some days where he was quieter than normal. But for the most part, Eli experienced his dad’s FaceTime calls, some texts here and there checking in when he would work late, and at best, him coming home at a reasonable hour to eat dinner with his family. Greeting his wife with a smile on his face and a kiss to her cheek, a kiss for him on the top of his head and a passing ruffle of his hand on his hair as he asked him about his day. 

Apparently very different from how his older siblings had grown up. 

“It’s not that he wasn’t affectionate,” Katie had said. “We knew he loved us and didn’t hide that at all. He’s a good dad. Too protective maybe, but a good one. He just…became more withdrawn sometimes. Or we wouldn’t see him for a while, which was scary for us and for mom. They would fight a lot when he came home too late and forgot to call her.”

Eli couldn’t understand that. His parents seemed normal to him. He barely heard either of them raise their voices. 

They would all eat dinner together more often than not, bouncing conversation back and forth. His dad would even spend some time practicing his Italian with him whenever he had homework.

“Back in Italy, we were so close…” Eli tries again quietly.

He doesn’t really remember too much about his younger days living in New York. Only flashes of playing with his siblings, some foggy memories of him and his mother laughing brightly as she chased him around, a spotty image of a brunette woman holding him and swinging him in her arms with a bright smile on her face—someone he remembered as “his Libby” (she would fade from his memory pretty quickly, though he knows now that was probably Olivia)—and he’s not sure on every detail, but he thinks he can picture his childhood house if he looks at some of the old photos his dad had stored away to help him conjure the memory.

But Eli mostly recognizes Rome as his home. He loved it there. Love the memories he made with his family, the friends he met at school or during his soccer games. It was nice. Calm. Overall, he would say he had a pretty great childhood. But his family, his siblings, weren’t really part of that experience.

And he hardly ever had an argument with his dad. Until the week right before his mother got hurt. When his mom mentioned the invite they received for some NYPD event to his dad, he witnessed his dad shut down, become more secluded, more quiet and avoidant, snappy to his son’s innocent questions about his well-being.

Never before had he seen his dad get upset in the way his siblings had described until that day. Until the day of the explosion. Or the days and weeks after when his mom didn’t wake up. Then he started to see the image of his father that his siblings had sketched for him, developing into a fully animated, vibrant picture as his mood worsened and his nights were disturbed with shouts and angry punches to the wall.

“But it’s changed since we came to New York. My dad…he’s been through so much. I don’t even know half of what he has been through as a cop, but that time with my mom was so hard for him, for all of us. I just made it worse when I—well, you know…” He trails off. When I got so anxious that I ran away and stupidly met up with a stranger and somehow ended up on a ledge by the Washington Bridge instead of just dealing with my shit. 

“I’m alone. That’s the truth. I’m the outsider of the family.” He hears Noah softly interject with No, Eli. No. 

But he barrels through it. “They all feel bad about it now, but I know they will all choose to forgive Mom so easily and I–I just can’t do that. Not right now. Not ever. And they’ll hate me for it. They’ll resent me. My dad has already been pulling away, going undercover every fucking week for his job. I didn’t take it as personally before, but now—” he laughs bitterly.

Now. Now he knows.

His dad can avoid him all he wants. There’s no obligation for him to stay.

“Eli, your dad is just working. I know it sucks, but my mom goes in all the time. It’s just their stupid job. It’s not like they have a choice.” 

Eli shakes his head in rejection. “Of course they have a choice. I don’t know about Olivia, but my dad? He—” A light buzz interrupts his rant. He checks his phone, but there is no new notification.  

Eli sees Noah pull his phone from his back pocket, swiping his thumb across the screen and swiftly replying to the message he received. 

Noah slides his phone back into his pocket again, before exhaling a hefty sigh. Eli can already sense his friend has something to say that will leave him with a heavy heart. 

“Look, Eli. I might only be a kid to you, but I’m not dumb. I know this stuff. I know what it’s like to have a weird family history and an unusual type of family. I know what it feels like to be hurt by a big secret or a lie—whatever. And, yeah, you were right. Our situations are different. Because you have a million people in your family who also didn’t know about that stuff like you and are probably hurt by all of this too. And from what I saw after you left the room, they are all really upset—not at you, but…they just want you to be ok because you are their family. Especially Elliot. He’s a good dad. Just talk to him. You know that he would never just…forget you or not accept you as his son.”

This kid.  

A heavy heart and a fucking punch to the gut.

“My mom wants to go home soon,” Noah untangles his legs and slides off the bed, stretching his skinny arms above his head with a groan and a sigh. “Should probably put my shoes on before she barges in here. So what did we learn from the smartest person in the room, huh? It’s a crazy situation but it’s totally ok to be upset. Just don’t forget about the people who love you—”

Before Noah could bend down to pick up his sneaker, Eli intercepts with a stiff, lanky arm wrapping around the slightly shorter boy’s shoulders before resting his other hand on top of his head. 

He feels awkward—tense, because they don’t really do this. The feeling only grows when Noah stands frozen like a statue. He doesn’t know where it came from. He just felt an overwhelming wave of gratitude rush through him, moving him to hug his friend. The tension abates when he feels Noah finally reach around, hugging him back even tighter. 

“Thank you for—Thank you,” he whispers. His voice might just remain hoarse for the rest of the night from all the emotional distress. Oh, well.

“I got your back, Eli. Like you have mine, right?” It comes out muffled against his shoulder. Eli smiles. “Always.”

They break apart, both seeming shy now as they make eye contact. But they can read each other pretty well now, can adjust quickly to each other’s moods. They fall back in sync with their usual playful dynamic. “Soooo I guess I’ll just pretend like I didn’t come in First Place in like four different races today? You might start crying again,” Noah says with a smug grin, slipping his shoe on his right foot and tripping himself in the process.

“Please,” Eli scoffs, lightheartedly rolling his eyes. “If anything my crying was from seeing how unusually awful you were. Don’t think I didn’t see you sliding off the track a billion times.” 

“Whatever—Hey! I forgot I put this in here,” Noah has one shoe on, while he is crouched down on the floor, and then he shuffles across on his knees until he pulls out a small gift bag tucked under Eli’s desk, riding up onto his unbalanced feet. “I hid it earlier when I got here so you could find it later, but honestly you could just open it now. If you want to.”

Before he could respond to the sweet gesture, reaching for the bag, there’s a knock at the door just as he was about to grab the gift from Noah. “Eli? I’m just checking in. Wanna make sure you and Noah are ok. Can I come in?”

Eli looks to Noah, wordlessly asking the boy what he should do. Great Eli.

Like the twelve-year-old knows. 

But he sees the kid is only looking at him with a slight tilt of his head. He can see it in Noah’s eyes—Whatever you want to do. He’ll follow Eli’s lead.

“I don’t know if I am ready to face them all yet,” he mutters quietly, biting his lip.

Noah nods and shrugs. “I think Dickie just wants to be there for you. Like me. Like the rest of them.” He clumsily puts his second shoe on.

“I don’t know,” he nervously rubs the back of his head. “A part of me believes that, but I also feel like he will try to defend her and…I don’t really wanna hear that right now.”

“I mean…you were kinda harsh out there—” He holds his hands up in defense when Eli glares at him. “I know! I know. You were reasonably mad. Just saying. My mom would give me her freaky-scary-cop stare for days if I spoke to her like that.”

Before he could reply, Dickie interrupts. “Ok, uh. That’s alright. Look, I just want you to know that you have people in your corner, Eli. I’m here for you if you need some brotherly advice. I’m probably not that great at it, but—yeah. I’ll just—sit out here.”  

Eli looks at the door with a pensive stare. He shakes his head after a few moments of silence and turns his back, facing Noah instead of the door. “Lemme see. Show me what you got.” 

Thankfully, the boy follows with ease and, with his shoes finally secured on his feet, he clumsily rises from the ground and hands over the bag. Eli senses a shyness coming from Noah, but he’s also radiating excitement more than anything, now shoving it into his hands, eager for him to unveil his present. 

Eli takes out the crumbled wrapping paper and pulls out a blue envelope first, ‘Eli’ handwritten on the front neatly, likely Olivia’s doing. But before he can open it, Noah snatches it and tosses it on the bed. 

“Hey!” 

“You can open that later. My mom and I wrote a lot of very sappy stuff and we don’t really have time. Next!”

Eli clicks his tongue, but moves on quickly. He grabs a small, black drawstring pouch from the inside of the bag. He raises his head, his eyebrows lifting in tandem as he mockingly looks up at the boy. Noah rolls his eyes as Eli dangles the pouch above him by one of its flimsy strings. questioning his approval of actually opening this particular gift. “Yes, yes. C’mon already! Open it.”

His mouth automatically shapes into a soft pout as he tugs the item tucked into the pouch, revealing a bracelet with a rotating pattern of red, white, and green round beads with some smaller gold beads breaking the Italian colors. The center of the bracelet—all white squares with tiny, black printed letters—reads “9DONNARUMMA9,” with the number nine bookending each side of the word. My favorite soccer player.

“I, um. I hope you like it. My friends and I like to make them—look, I even have some too,” Noah displays his wrist, wrapped with two bracelets. One has purple, blue, and pink beads (Eli feels a tug at his brain in recognition of the familiar colors, but doesn’t think too much about it), and the other is just green with his name on it. “I remember you said this guy was your favorite because he’s a really good goalkeeper. That’s the position you play, right?” 

“Yeah, he’s amazing. I wanted to play that position mostly because of him. Thanks, dude. This will be my good luck charm for games now.” He slides it onto his wrist. 

Noah looks bashful, but he’s beaming with a proud smile that the older boy likes his gift. “That’s not even the best part! Get the other thing.”

Eli looks inside the bag, immediately recognizing the green border of an Xbox amaray case. He lets out a sharp gasp and a “No way!” as he sees the cover—a near mint copy of Fifa 13, his favorite of the soccer series. 

“How’d you know, man? This is the best one!”

Noah shrugs. “Maybe ‘cause you mentioned it like 50 times just today. And you told me like a month ago how sad you were that you scratched your disc so…”

“Shut up,” he says lightheartedly. “But seriously, Noah, this is so sick. And so thoughtful. I–How did you even find this? It looks brand new!”

“Mom didn't know jack about this stuff, so I asked Fin to help me. I didn’t want to get scammed because people were charging way too much for it or just selling scratched discs. Is it ok? You like it?”

“Yes! I know you don’t like sports video games, but maybe I can show you how to play this one. It’s honestly the best and way more fun than the recent Fifa games.”

“Yeah, that’d be cool.” 

“Thank you. Seriously.” Eli bumps his fist with the pre-teen.

The sweet moment is drowned out by an influx of muffled voices coming from outside the door. The rough cadence of his father’s voice makes Eli tense and become teary-eyed. His stomach drops as he hears him telling someone he has to go. No. He can’t leave.

He senses Noah trailing behind him as he steps to the door, finally making his presence known once the door opens. 

“Dad? You’re leaving?”

In his peripheral vision, he sees his older brother get up from the floor. 

Eli repeatedly swallows, trying to make his voice sound less hoarse, less shaky. He was finally having a good moment, his mind settled after such a strong breakdown. Now it’s all forgotten, replaced with a nervousness that settles deep in his gut as he waits for his dad to answer. Please stay.  

But he notices the familiar shake of his dad’s head, the fine tremor of his hands, the twitch of his eyes. All signs that fill him with dread.

“I, um. I got called into work.” 

There it is.  

“Eli, I…” But he doesn’t get to finish. Because the rest of his family, his mom, all come from the kitchen. He can’t even focus on that though. He’s downcast, still reeling with the heartbreak caused by his dad’s words. He feels a slight tug at his arm as Noah attempts to grab his attention. He hears him whisper Remember what I said, Eli before he hears Olivia call for Noah so that they can go home. 

He’s trying. But it feels impossible to just barely keep his head above the floods of devastation that are so quickly drowning him. He wants his friend to stay. He wants his dad to be here. He even wants Olivia here, who could tether his father and keep him from running, who could be a person in his corner. He knows she would try to be there for him.

“Call me if you need anything, ok?” 

He tries to smile, but it’s a sad attempt. He hopes he can convey his genuine gratitude for her. For her son. He does a quick nod of his head and says bye to both Noah and Olivia. Their departure leaves him unsteady.

And then he just simmers with rage as his mother tries and tries to talk to him. And his brother and big sisters try and try and plead to just listen, Eli. 

But he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to listen. He just wants to know—

“Just tell me if you’re leaving.”

And he waits. Hoping that it won’t be true. That all of his doubts are just that and not facts, not the reality. That his dad will be his dad and insist that he loves him, that he is his son, that he is his.

That he belongs here, still. With his family.

But that’s not what he actually says.

“I am. I…I have to go. They need me.” 

And then he’s drowning. The floods are too much, too powerful. His face crumples as the disappointment shatters his heart. 

But I need you. I need you. 

The heat of his weepy face makes him dizzy. His gaze is focused on his shoes as he tries not to release louder cries. “Look at me, son.”

And he can’t. He cannot hope for even a second. Even after hearing ‘son.’ Even as his father tries to look at him, as he touches his face gently, as his voice gets softer. More tears slide down his cheeks.

“Look at me, Eli. Please. I need you to listen. I have to leave, but I am not leaving you, alright?”

He just can’t.

Eli shakes off the hands on his face. “Just go.” 

The hurt is hitting him full-force, but it quickly turns into anger. 

He doesn’t care about me. So I won’t care about him.

Noah was so, so wrong.

“Well, what are you waiting for? They need you, right? Go. Leave!” 

His dad is unmoving. He doesn’t understand what he’s so hesitant about now. He has obviously made his choice. Eli won’t stand around any fucking longer, waiting for comfort that he is never going to get. He goes to the kitchen in search of his dad’s keys—he’s always losing track of them—and harshly pushes it against his chest, almost throwing them at him with the force.

“Go ahead. I won’t stop you. I’m used to it by now.” Eli says bitterly before walking to his room and slamming the door behind him.

Somehow he’s ended up exactly where he was before. Only this time instead of sulking on his bed, he moves around his room with purpose, grabbing a duffle from the opposite corner of his bed, half-paying attention to what he’s actually packing as he chaotically bounces around to his desk, his mattress, his bedside table, his dresser, and places various essentials in the brown bag. 

His phone buzzes twice with messages. He picks it up, planning to ignore any notifications as he wants to solely focus on texting one of his friends to ask them if he could crash. But he pauses as he sees the texts are actually from Noah and Olivia.

Noah: hey eli. sorry we left. i’m glad you liked your gifts. btw my mom said if you wanted to come over you can :)

Olivia: Hi, sweetheart. I’m sorry we had to go so soon. And I’m sorry if your dad didn’t stay (though I really hope he did). I’m trying my best to make sure he doesn’t work. I know you’re both hurting, but he loves you so much, don’t forget that. If you need anything from me, anything at all, just let me know.

He looks at his disheveled duffle bag of clothes on the floor—Well, it seems to be just a lot of t-shirts. And his switch. Did he even pack underwear?—and the gift bag that now rests on his desk. He looks over at his bed with the unopened birthday card before deciding that maybe the Bensons are better to be around than his friend, Jamie, who might sense his distress and just quietly shove a bong and a cold beer into his trembling hands.

He opens the thread with Noah first and replies with ‘hey little dude. i really did. thank you again so so much. i appreciate you’

He hesitates as he goes to Olivia’s message. He isn’t entirely sure how he feels about the woman. Has mixed feelings because of his own friendship with her son and her…something…with his dad. And it only becomes more unclear with every conflicting story from each member of his family.

He rereads the message a few times and feels a stirring in his heart every time he glosses over “sweetheart.” 

It’s small. Barely anything. And probably very common within her vocabulary. A necessity, maybe; meant to ease and to comfort, necessary for a woman with a really special, harrowing job, one that requires her to bleed sympathy and support through every word and interaction.

But, honestly, that’s the deciding factor in the end. He’s hurt by his own mother, by his father, and he is in desperate need of parental guidance, of the comfort of family (or near enough).

Olivia’s not his mother, but she is a mother. Extending a hand towards him, offering a kindness that he thinks he might not get from this place anymore. At least not right now. 

And that makes his fingers easily glide across his phone screen as he texts her ‘can i stay with you tonight?’

Chapter Text

Ayanna has never sighed so much in her life. 

She’s not sure if her job has always been this hard, or if it has only recently become unforgiving to the degree that she arrives home more exhausted and burnt out, feeling as if every single day was spent receiving blows and bruises and aches, when really she hasn’t been out in the field all that often.

Sure she fucked up her leg and was close to death from the wild face-off at the warehouse, but it’s not like that happens to her every day, and, realistically, it’s part of the job; something she, unfortunately, feels like she is used to enduring, but this time feels different, and she doesn’t think she is supposed to feel this heavy, this damaged.

Nothing has felt quite steady since the downfall of the Brotherhood, if she’s honest. It caused enough of a stink in the department that she knew the task force was under intense surveillance, even if they didn’t explicitly tell her.

Of course, they were more than comfortable warning her every other meeting to be wary of Detective Stabler. A loose cannon, they often said. It’s like they couldn’t fully believe that he was undercover and not actually a corrupt cop.

And Bell would defend him as his superior, but it never felt like enough. She couldn't say it aloud, being the professional she was, but she always wanted to just tell them to fuck off. 

Instead, Bell would keep her words locked in tight, and simply smile and nod. 

She sighs. The throbbing behind her eyes is persistent. Her leg still aches from the Silas showdown. 

With every criminal enterprise they dismantle or every bad guy they take off the street, it still leaves them (her task force and the department, apparently) dissatisfied. It didn’t help that no matter how many wins they had, there were too many questions lingering afterwards about the conduct of her team. Too much turnover with the detectives, too much death, too much doubt, fear of some lurking corruption or dirtiness hanging onto the team. Lately, Bell has felt like she can’t really blame the close eye on them, on her. 

She undoubtedly trusts her team. But even she thinks that busting her fair share of dirty politicians, cops, and seemingly ‘good’ people fighting for good causes has left her feeling cynical. Like all the good OCCB was doing was all a facade, not good enough, and yet they were patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Like being surrounded by the Machiavellian schemes of the people they caught would rub off on her, making her dirty like them. 

Ultimately, her faith has been shaken.

And when she comes home, shedding her clothes for the night, collapsing into her bed with the longest sigh, completely and utterly drained, her house quiet and empty, she thinks maybe it’s not just the job that has thrown her off balance.

So maybe Bell boasted here and there about her team in her interview, making it so that they couldn’t twist her words or the entire narrative that they were anything but remarkable as a team. That she wasn’t proud of them. It curbs the doubt inside her and reminds her that there is still goodness in the world, still people fighting to preserve humanity in small doses, and it’s especially true within her squad. 

Her interview was quick, succinct. She tells them about all the moving pieces of the Silas investigation and how it ended with them at the warehouse, recounts waiting for the DA to make the deal with Silas only to be deceived. She flies through the dramatic events with ease, mentioning the team being surrounded before it ended with a mass surrender and successful arrest of Robert Silas.

When it’s over, they let her know that she has given them all they need and she is free to return to her position as a C.O. (with a quick praise for seeing the investigation through with a lot less damage than they expected and a not-so soft reminder to see a shrink within the next week to be fully cleared). 

But they still need to talk to Stabler.

When Bell called him, she knew that he was taking a few days off (begrudgingly, of course, and under her strict orders), having already given his rundown of the case and everything that transpired, and she had told IAB to give him time to cool down before any follow-up meetings were planned. 

But they were not agreeable to it in the slightest, completely unsympathetic. 

They wouldn’t give any leeway to this cop, who has been inside of an IAB interview room too many times, who has been described none too fairly as an overzealous cop with a bad habit of breaking or bending the rules to his advantage, who now has eleven shootings under his belt.

He sounded off on the phone when she told him that he needed to come down again, which made her want to fight against IAB a little harder, but he shockingly agreed without putting up much of a fight. 

Now they wait. 

However, the IAB detectives sitting before her cannot seem to understand, or maybe aren’t aware, that their intimidation tactics will not get her to somehow transcend space and time to bring her detective to their office faster. 

Well, it’s really just one detective who’s giving her the worst energy, his eyes heavy and intense on her with an unimpressed glare. The other simply looks like he’s minutes away from taking a nap.

And truthfully she is right there behind him.

This whole meeting is unnecessary, but she is trying her best to cooperate to make the task force seem like a team player. Lord knows they need to improve their image and somehow get back in the good graces of the brass if they were just at the tipping point of being shut down permanently.

She is observing them carefully with a scrutinous look, putting her detective skills to good use and analyzing him as if he were a perp. The irritated, younger man—Detective Roland, she thinks—checks his watch, his knee bouncing with impatience. She can’t help but notice that he’s a decent-looking guy. She doesn’t usually pay attention to men (not exactly her type), but she has literally nothing else to do but wait. 

His suit isn’t as rumpled for this time of day, and she sees that its deep, forest-green color accents the soft shade in his eyes and flatters his golden skin. His hair is dark brown, wavy and clearly styled. She inhales a faint scent, an earthy tone that she associates with older men rather than the more common woodsy smell or strong musky scent that younger men typically use (and which gives her an automatic headache). He has a faint, dual impression on either side of the bridge of his nose, like he might have been wearing glasses before this, though they’re nowhere in sight now. 

It reminds her of Denise, who hated wearing her glasses and practically hid them from everyone else, only wearing them at night as her eyes would blur reading pages and pages of legal documents, and how she would try to rub off the dents like she was afraid it would be permanently imprinted on her. 

She misses her. Misses Jack. She misses coming home to her wife.

Ex-wife. God.

She wishes she hadn’t fucked up so bad.

“You did mention that this was mandatory, correct?” He says with slight condescension. Bell bristles a bit, his appearance not appealing so much now.

Before she can reply, the other detective—she assumes he’s probably closer to Stabler’s age; if the salt-and-pepper hair and crow’s feet don’t hint at it, the subtle shifts and stretches of his body suggesting lingering aches and discomfort will—responds with a half-hearted tone. 

“Easy, detective. Sergeant Bell here is very capable at her job. No need to get prickly.” Before she can register that this detective has surprisingly said something validating and nice about her, his following words quickly irritate her. “Besides, it’s not like Stabler is known to be a rule-follower. We’ve got a pretty hefty file on him. I’m sure the Sarge has had her fill already.” 

Now she just wants to wipe that stupid smirk off Detective Hanson’s face. 

They don’t know shit about Stabler. 

She will admit, he can be a handful. Especially when he strays too far from the job and has an irritating habit (she now accepts with affection...most of the time) of ignoring her orders—which are meant to protect him, not hinder his abilities; she wishes he could understand that and avoid going into dangerous situations half-cocked. 

But he’s a good cop, has better instincts than most of the cops she knows. She sees how strong he is, how hard he works as a detective, how faithful he is to the job. She respects him, and more importantly, he respects her and her command, which unfortunately is more uncommon for his generation.

Above all, Bell knows that she can trust him.

Her phone rings. “Excuse me,” she rises from her seat, walking closer to the door to get some semblance of privacy. Assuming it’s Elliot telling her he is finally on his way (she sees the IAB detectives perk up, likely making the same assumption), she doesn’t look at the screen as she answers, “Bell.”

“Ayanna, hey. I, um, I’m calling about Elliot.” She stiffens in surprise and slight apprehension. Hearing the shakiness of Captain Benson’s voice puts her on edge. 

“Captain, is everything alright?” 

Bell can hear the faint clicking of a turn signal, making her aware that the other woman is driving. She turns her back on the IAB detectives, as she waits with a tension settling on her shoulders. 

“Yes. I think so. Have you talked to El yet?”

El.  

So this is a personal call. Shit.

What the hell did Stabler get into?

“I’ve tried to reach him for a bit. I called him maybe an hour ago about his IAB interview and we talked but it was quick. Is he alright?”

There’s a pause, a faint murmur from…a child? A quick and distant back-and-forth conversation disrupts them. She knows Captain Benson has a son from Stabler mentioning it to her in passing. Biting her lip, a climbing thickness threatens her throat. She thinks of Jack, her yearning for her son growing steadily at the sound of this other little boy. 

“Sorry, my son is—Uh, It’s not exactly my business to share. I think–I think he’s okay. But he won’t be if he goes in right now. Ayanna, he…” Bell grips the phone tighter. “He needs to stay home. I’m sorry that I can’t say more, but—”

Bell wants to believe that Stabler would be more forthcoming about what he can handle. She remembers how he was in the beginning, his drowning and instability as his wife was in a (seemingly) hopeless state, unlikely to come back to him. 

But she remembers how even in the worst moments, he had trusted her enough to tell her when it became too much for him, had called her when he needed someone to keep his head on straight. And in turn, he asked that she trust him to do his job, to talk to him first if she suspects he isn’t focused enough and before she makes any quick decisions on his behalf, even if it’s for his own good.

He hasn’t said anything to her about the warehouse. Is he breaking their pact? Did the shooting affect him more than he let on? Why couldn’t he just tell her on the phone that he might need some time to deal? 

“I understand your concern, Captain—” Bell starts, respectfully wanting to tell her that this is bordering on inappropriate and unprofessional. She is well aware of Stabler and Benson’s slowly rekindling friendship, has been involuntarily caught between the gossiping whispers of Jet and Jamie whenever they spot Stabler talking on the phone with a huge smile on his face.

"If he had hair, he'd be twirling it with his fingers like a teenage girl right now," Jet had jokingly said once with a soft roll of her eye.

But as far as she is concerned, and despite the rumors she has heard throughout the department (and by department, she really means Sergeant Tutuola), that’s all it is. 

Though this phone call sounds more like the meddling concerns of a frightened wife.

Friendship.

Ha.

"But I think Elliot is perfectly capable—"

“It’s Eli, Ayanna.”

Oh. Now that’s different.

“Look, I know this might not be my place—Hell, I know once Elliot finds out, he might go ballistic on me—But you know I wouldn’t do something like this without good reason. I’m doing this as his friend and as a captain. I wouldn’t want one of my detectives in his headspace to be working right now, trust me. Tell IAB it’s a family emergency. He needs to stay home.”

She’s hesitant, unsure of how to respond. No, she has to trust Stabler, she thinks. She does trust him. He would tell her. He is her partner, even with their difference in rank. 

But so is Olivia.

She knows that is still true. It doesn't matter how much time has passed or how different everything has become for the two of them. Their bond is not one that can be so easily forgotten or replaced, and she would have to be blind to not see how protective they are with each other.

It gives her some peace knowing that someone else, someone as headstrong and good as Captain Benson, recognizes just how valuable he is to have as a partner, that someone else understands how effortless it feels to rely on him and to have his back in return.

To her, it must mean something that Olivia's trust in Elliot has outlasted beyond their 13 years together and has yet to disappear, even with their distance in their respective careers.

And Elliot?

His faith in her is unbreakable, indestructible, everlasting. 

Bell sighs.

She trusts Elliot. Elliot trusts Captain Benson.

She makes a judgement call.

Choosing to believe that it must be something big with Eli if Stabler can’t even be trusted to make this decision for himself, she decides that she can do what she can to make his life a little easier. She hopes this doesn’t backfire on her. 

Damn it. She sighs again.

“Alright. I’ll see what I can do,” Bell hears an exasperated noise behind her. “Be honest. How much time will he need?” How bad is it, really?  

“I can’t answer that. Only he can.” There is a faint slam in the background, like the sound of a car door closing. She hears it again, louder, closer this time. Then a beeping as the captain locks her car. “But he won’t be able to think about what he needs until this situation has…at the very least calmed down. And it isn’t right now. I don’t even know if he left his apartment yet. God, I hope he listened.”

“But he’s ok? Eli? And Elliot?”

“They will be. I know this…this isn’t standard and you might get some grief over it. I owe you, Sergeant Bell. Big time.”

Back to the formalities, I guess. 

“Of course, Captain. I appreciate the update.” She finally turns back around to face an irate Detective Roland and an unamused Detective Hanson before continuing, “My team needs a break right now anyway. I'll see to it that he gets his deserved time off.”

“Good, ok. Thank you for trusting me, Bell. I’ll be here if you need backup.”

She faintly releases a soft hmm in acknowledgement before hanging up, gearing up for a fight. She stands up a little straighter.

“Sergeant Bell—” 

“I apologize, but Detective Stabler will not be able to attend today’s interview due to a serious family emergency. As his superior, I will make sure that he attends the rescheduled meeting I’m assuming you will plan, since you seem adamant that you haven’t received enough information about the events that took place during the warehouse shooting, despite—"

"Sergeant, please—"

"—despite the fact that Detective Stabler has already given his statement, and so have the rest of my team. I’m still not quite sure what you are looking for, but if your comments about Detective Stabler and that hefty file next to you suggest anything, it tells me that you don’t actually have any real questions about the investigation. No, you are looking to punish one of my best detectives—”

“It’s his eleventh shooting, Ayann–”

“—for simply doing his job. And let me be clear, if it were not for my team, Robert Silas and every criminal associated with him would not be in custody right now. And if it were not for Detective Stabler, I wouldn’t be standing here arguing with you, I’d be in a damn body bag.” Her voice is stern and carries across the entire room. She gloats a little in her head when she notices Detective Roland has a little bit of sweat on his forehead and sees him swallow thickly, his clear indignation only adding to her glee. 

“You will give him his time off, and I will gladly make sure that his ass is parked right here after he sees a psychologist and is cleared for duty, if you still have some confusion about our recent investigation and decide a meeting might be needed after all.” Bell smiles sweetly, before turning around, departing with confidence. 

“We’re done here,” she says before they get to open their mouths.

So much for being a team player, she thinks.

But they deserved it.

She slams the door and texts Stabler as she walks to her car. 

“Jesus fucking Christ! Look both ways asshole!”

“Hey—slow the fuck down, moron!”

The rumble of the truck engine roars as it high tails past Elliot. The red-faced driver fully blows off his loud reprimand, and the screech of the tires as it rips around the corner barely masks the rest of the expletives leaving the driver’s mouth.

He didn’t expect to be inches away from becoming roadkill on the dirty, wet pavement beneath him.

But he was distracted walking out of the main entrance of his place, hands stuffed into his pockets, searching for warmth with his head bent down, heavy on his tense shoulders. Elliot was focused on the ground, zoned out and only vaguely registering the pounding of his footsteps as he punctured small piles of melting snow. He completely missed the sound of an incoming car.

He managed, though, to make it to his car unscathed, breathing heavily, his adrenaline peaked.

Elliot’s hand leaves his pocket in a flash, suddenly feeling a different kind of warmth as the pain spreads across his knuckles. He grunts as his fist meets the black steel—one, two—a trace of blood smudges onto the car door. 

It would blend in with the melting snow dripping over the rest of the car, if only there wasn’t a small, dented impression underneath it.

Elliot slips inside the vehicle, ignoring the damage he caused, and slams the door. He flexes his sore hand, hoping nothing is broken. 

What the hell is he going to do now?

He had a destination; a plan that was formed for him because of his job; a call to duty that is so familiar and normal even when it disrupts his life that he craves it, the ringing so much louder than the blaring voice in his head urging him to go back inside his apartment. He could easily follow through with that. But he felt completely immobilized also, torn apart inside with uncertainty and fear about his family. 

He doesn’t want to go back, but he knows, truly, that leaving might be the last straw, the final cut of the fragile thread his family has been trying to keep tied together. It all falls upon his shoulders, he believes, just like the first time around. 

Elliot needs to fix it, he has to. He has always proudly carried the role as the protector in his family. He can’t back out now. Otherwise, he will have failed them. Again. If he hasn’t already.

But where do they go from here? Is the damage too much, far beyond repair? 

Too focused on the patches of crimson blood and his cut skin, he jumps as he hears a knock on the driver’s window. He sees his daughter, Kathleen,  watches her breath fog up the glass as she leans in closer. She looks back and he follows her movement, hears her faintly tell the others who joined her walk in the park to go ahead, I’ll be right in.  

Elliot looks back at his girl as she waves at them, distracted. 

For a moment, he saw her grown face transform back into her younger features, the version of his daughter that he will always see, no matter how much time changes her. A sweet innocence, playful and full of light that he hasn’t seen in a long time. She looks at him with a dim smile on her face as her blonde hair whips across her flushed cheeks. Her blue eyes shine brightly; the cold, pale ambience of the approaching winter surrounds her, highlighting her warmth. She’s wearing the earrings her mother gifted her for her birthday.

So beautiful.  

When he sees her sweet expression falter, her eyes dropping to his bloody hand, he tries to smile back at her, swallowing the guilt that chokes him as it does nothing to wipe away the look of worry on her face. 

He can’t seem to keep that smile on his children’s faces. Too much has happened, and they have all grown up way too fast. 

God, he thinks, when the hell did I become my father? He shudders.

She walks around the car, leaning closer to the window again. 

“You gonna let me in? It’s cold as shit.”

He unlocks the door, and his daughter slips inside, the temperature only a little bit warmer than outside, but the car stays off as the two get settled. 

Kathleen huffs out a breath as she shifts in the passenger seat. He notices she keeps locking onto his battered hand. He flexes it and then lifts it to wipe across his face before dropping it on the wheel. “Honestly, I thought you might have sped off already, but you actually let me in. I hope you know I’m not getting out now. Too cold.” She shivers.

“Kathleen, I do have to go.” It’s a lame attempt, he knows. But that's all he can think to say. He doesn’t turn despite her pointed focus on him.

“I know. I heard on the phone.” She pauses. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

He bristles in annoyance. No, it’s definitely not. He knows it’s not. But—

“I can’t stay here, Katie.”

“Why not? We can…we can talk here. Just in the car for a bit.”

He shakes his head. “No. No. I really…Look, Bell called me in. It’s not something I can just ignore—”

“Yeah, well this isn’t either, Dad.”

Elliot takes a deep breath, trying to quell the ugly rage that is trembling his hands.

A frantic knock on his window interrupts them. Kathleen unlocks the doors before he barely registers his youngest daughter reaching for the door handle and slipping into the backseat noisily, the cold chasing her into the car.

“My god, it’s cold as fuck! There isn’t even that much snow. What the hell?”

“Weather app says it’s dropping to the 30s tonight. I almost ate shit on my walk from all the black ice,” Kathleen sighs.

“Fuck,” Lizzie exhales, exasperated. “Uh, Daddy, I don’t know if you noticed, but the car door is dented. Did somebody tap you?”

“When did you guys get such bad mouths, huh?”

“Please. Like you’re a saint,” he hears from Kathleen. She looks to the backseat, noticing a panting Lizzie. “You alright?”

“Ran out here. I thought you might have left already, Dad. I’m glad I caught you.”

Elliot is staring out the windshield still, unfocused, flexing his throbbing hand against the wheel. “I have to leave right now.” He has said it so many times that it doesn’t even make sense to speak it aloud anymore. The words have become hollow. 

Lizzie sighs. “M-Maybe you shouldn’t go. Can’t you call your sergeant and tell her—”

He snaps. “No, I can’t stay here!” In the compact space, Elliot’s voice booms loudly. “Jesus. I can’t…”

He puts his head in his hands, disappointed in himself for so easily breaking, for shouting at people who don’t deserve his anger. The dead air left by his daughters only worsens his mood. Fuck.

Kathleen quietly and calmly says, “Ok, you can’t stay. Why?”

He stays quiet, irritation sizzling hot inside him.

“Tell us,” Kathleen softly implores.

Elliot just keeps shaking his head, emotion clogging his throat and forcing him to breathe more deeply. He wants to explain, but he’s not sure he is even capable of saying it without a sharp bite attached to his words. 

“It’s just us, Dad. We won’t judge you or…I don’t know. What are you so afraid of that you can’t tell us?” Katie persists, softening her words as her brows furrow slightly in confusion.

“It’s ok. Just tell us,” came Lizzie’s reassuring voice. “Why can’t you stay?”

He feels himself unraveling further until he snaps. Afraid. That’s definitely the feeling he can identify with most right now. 

“Because I am furious. I am angry, and I cannot stay here because I’m crawling out of my goddamn skin and I feel like I just need to put my fist through something! I don’t want Eli or any one of you to see that!” Elliot explains bitterly and with force, the last of his words mix with an angry scoff as he shakes his head. 

His daughters have already seen the fucked up mess he made of his hand.

“Why not? Just be angry.”

Elliot looks at her, bewildered. “Why not? What do you mean ‘why not?' You all hate when I get like this.”

Kathleen rolls her eyes, “Well, ok, we are not particularly fond of you yelling at us and interrogating us, sure. And I mean, obviously, we don’t like seeing you hurt yourself.” She grabs his bloody hand and pulls it into her lap gently. 

Elliot leans back against the headrest and slightly angles his head towards her, his eyes glassy. The tears pool more when he feels Lizzie’s hands reach around his seat, resting on his shoulders. Her fingers are softly petting him, squeezing in comfort.

Katie continues, “But that doesn’t mean you have to hide your anger from us. Those are your real emotions. We all feel it. We understand it. You don’t have to...run away or keep it locked inside forever. It’s not good for you, Dad.”

“I…” He clears his throat, thick with emotion. “I never want you guys to be afraid of me. I've seen...I’ve been on the receiving end of my own father’s anger and I hated it. I don’t…That’s why I just think I should go.”

Kathleen exhales. He can sense his daughter becoming exasperated. “You understand that you will only hurt Eli more if you leave, right? He doesn’t need to be pushed aside. He can handle your anger. He's definitely feeling angry and hurt too, Dad. You saw how he was with Mom.”

Lizzie softly adds, “Plus, I'm guessing you already took it out on the car. You don’t have to worry about hitting anyone.” She says it as a light joke, and it even makes Kathleen let out a soft laugh, but Elliot’s stomach clenches. 

“You know I would never…” He can’t even say it aloud, does not want to even put that idea into their heads. He glances in the rearview mirror, and he thinks he might be going crazy now because he swears his father is there in the back, sitting stoic, looking right through him, discerning, knowing. Dread fills him and he chokes out the rest of his thoughts. “Never. I would never do that to you guys.”

“We know, Dad. We aren’t afraid of you.” Lizzie squeezes to emphasize Kathleen’s words.

“And, I mean, let’s be real. We wouldn’t blame you if you did have some very loud words with Mom. If you don’t, Eli probably will.”

Kathleen looks at her sister, displeased. “Lizzie, shh. You’re not helping.”

“What? I’m just saying that everyone has a right to be upset and everyone has the right to express their anger at Mom, especially Dad and Eli. It’s a fucked up situation and she’s part of why it’s so fucked up now.”

He can’t get a word in as his girls are bickering back and forth. It’s not like he wants to participate anyway. His brain is still a few steps behind, fixated on Katie’s words.

We aren’t afraid of you.

Elliot could collapse into tears from the relief that rushes through his body. He doesn’t think they would understand how hard that hit him, how tightly he is clinging to it, how much he needs it to be true. 

He repeats it in his head until he looks up again and the backseat is empty except for his daughter.

He worries every day that he fucked up his kids. Or that they see how flawed he is as a parent and will resent him the way he once did his own parents. He, of course, looks at his family through a lens of pride, grateful that they mostly have good heads on their shoulders; that they live full lives; or that they have loving, healthy relationships with people outside of family. 

But he doesn’t really know how much of that is his doing, or if he has any right to claim that their resilience and steadiness is because of his own parenting. He feels like maybe his wife deserves far more credit than him for raising such well-adjusted kids. Her presence was stronger in their lives, after all. 

Elliot, on the other hand, struggled to be at home with them. Because of his job, sure. But he was always running from his own childhood, too, he realizes. 

As time passed and his babies suddenly became teenagers then adults, he found that he could never truly shed the anxiety of feeling like the young, inexperienced parent he was when he and Kathy first married, filled with desperation to please his father and gain his respect. 

He was a scared kid, afraid of disappointing his father and, even more so, afraid that if he could never prove himself as a man, as his son, his father would just keep beating him down, physically and mentally. The fear remained well into his adulthood. His gaze flickers to the rearview again.

Elliot tried to think differently, be the parent he wished he had, the complete opposite of who his father was. He’s not perfect, but he loves his kids more than anything in the world. Elliot isn’t so sure some days that his dad had loved him, never really heard the words coming from his mouth, never felt it in the moments when he would strike him. And he never wants his babies to doubt his love or question their self-worth because of him. 

He listened to his kids. He attended their boring plays. He begrudgingly watched their favorite movies a billion times. He made an effort to know their interests and who their friends were. He provided as much as he could. He was protective. He was loving. 

He never wanted them to see the ugliness he had seen, the ugliness that nested inside him. He never wanted his children to become victims of his anger. 

And that was a double-edged sword. Because being an SVU detective for so long meant that he was angry all the damn time. So he would keep away from his family, shielding them from his rage. And, despite his daughter’s encouragement to embrace vulnerability, he still wants to keep that ugly part of himself locked away. 

Look what good that has done, he thinks. 

“We should be trying to get Dad to stay and talk to Mom and to Eli. Not just yell at her. It’s not usually productive to scream at someone—”

He had hoped that his kids knew that he loved them and that they felt it even if he wasn’t home all the time. He would be heartbroken if he spent so much time working to separate himself from the ghost of his father—his vicious anger, his harsh words, his unflinching hand—only to realize too late that he had failed miserably with his own children. Some days, like now, his father's ghost taunts him, bringing with him the memories of all the times he felt like he failed his family. 

He remembers Maureen sneaking out as a teenager, her resistance at being honest with him, afraid of his reaction, and his first instinct was to interrogate her, demanding for her whereabouts. He remembers exposing her to a crime scene that she never should have seen, an event that had caused her nightmares for weeks and still to this day is not something he can forgive himself for.

He thinks about Kathleen’s DUI, the first few signs of her bipolar disorder. He remembers her, his little girl half-naked, passed out in some drug den, close to death. He remembers his willful ignorance of her disorder, wanting to keep that connection to his mother closed off, forgotten.

The backseat is occupied again. He tries to blink away the tears, blink away the apparition of his father, blink away the horrible memories of his wrongdoings. But it sticks even behind his closed eyes.

He remembers feeling the harrowing sensation of shame in his belly as he slapped his first-born when she was just a baby, he remembers her cries and his endless I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry against her precious little body.

He remembers the harsh words from his son, and the tight grip he had on Dickie, shoving him against the nearest file cabinet at the precinct, only barely reigning in his anger once Kathy comes in to grab her son, pulling him away from him. He knows Olivia could see the shame he felt for himself all over his face that day. 

He thinks of Eli’s heartbreak, the disappointment in his teary eyes, the angered push against his chest. Just go. I’m used to it by now.  

The pain in his chest makes it hard to breathe.

He could never truly hide that ugliness from his children, no matter how hard he tried. It’s like his father was peering over his shoulder, making sure that he knew how to keep them in line, how to be a good father, worthy of respect. After all, he really only had his father to look up to when it came to any guidance with parenting; his mother was not suited to be a parent, not then, and she was off in her own head, leaving her children behind. 

But, Jesus. He had hoped that he didn’t become a complete copy of his dad, like his mother claimed. He hoped he knew better, grew from that experience and changed. 

Hadn’t he?

His father shifts in his seat, cracking his knuckles, the popping sound of bone making Elliot's stomach twist and turn.

“Sometimes it is! So, what, he should just sit there and be completely chill with her? Hell no!”

“No, Liz. He deserves to speak his mind. Eli too. But my point is he’s not going to be able to do that if he just keeps it all inside and avoids the conversation completely.” Kathleen turns to him, hesitant, before she says, “You realize by leaving you are doing the same thing that…that Papa Joe did?”

Elliot freezes. Is he really fucking there? Can she see him too? “Katie—”

“How many times did grandpa get angry, hurt you or Grandma B, and then leave to work with no regard to how you felt?” 

More cracking and popping. He can't look up anymore. No. No. I’m not like him. I can’t be.

He wants to vomit. He gets defensive instantly. “I-I would never hurt you guys the way that my dad did.” But you have already. You’ve put your hands on your own children. He clenches his bloody hand, digging blunt nails into his palm, punishing himself, but it’s not enough. “I’m not angry at Eli. I’m trying not to hurt him, Katie!” 

“I know that. I know,” she raises her hands to calm him. “I don’t mean to imply that you are abusive or anything like that. I’m trying to say that…”

Katie sighs. "I think in trying to break away from the shit you grew up with, you still might have gravitated toward certain actions that you were familiar with anyway. You told me that whenever there was a big fight between your parents or between grandpa and Uncle Randall, you would get upset and become emotional like any child would. But he would get annoyed by it. He would push you away. If he didn’t,” she pauses, looking pained, “If he didn’t hit you, he would ridicule you for your reaction or belittle your feelings, or just leave, right?” 

Her words are like a time machine, thrusting him back into his childhood. He remembers too much, all at once. He didn’t know what he did wrong; all he wanted was for the yelling to stop and for his dad to tell him It’s ok, Elliot. I love you. 

“You don’t hurt us, you’re right. You never have and never will. We all believe that. But you’re still avoiding us, leaving us to throw yourself into work thinking that you’re protecting us. But…it can feel like you don’t care enough when you just walk away. And that hurts.” She says it all delicately, but it still guts him when he hears the tinge of pain in her tone. 

Elliot shrunk into his seat, feeling unbelievably small and devastated. Anxiety ripples through his body. If he hears another soft crack, he might actually hurl on the pavement.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m not trying to…I don’t mean to upset you more or make you feel guilty. I just…don’t know how to get you to see all of this how we see it. We just want you here. With us.”

Lizzie squeezes his shoulders tightly. “Katie, stop.”

His throat feels sore, but he's listening. He's listening to their pain, their love, and he keeps reminding himself that what he is hearing is not them digging into a wound that is meant to bleed out, but a prickling stitch meant to close up the tear, intended to mend and heal. He knows the hurt won't last, but it is necessary.

He wipes his face quickly, twitching his head side to side. “It’s fine, Liz. It's okay. I’m fine. I-I needed to hear it.”

“I heard your phone buzz, Daddy,” Lizzie says, sympathy coating her words, offering a distraction. He checks his phone while Katie and Lizzie wait patiently, sharing secret looks to each other before quietly whispering to each other.

A handful of missed calls.

Five messages. Three from Bell.

Captain Benson has informed me that you have a family emergency to deal with and shouldn’t be reached right now. I hope you’re all good. Let me know if you need anything. I'm here for you, Stabler.

Rescheduled with IAB. They were not happy about it (shocking!) but I expressed that the team needed a little more time to come down after all that chaos. They’ll back off for now. Don’t expect them to wait for long. 

Also, make an appointment with the department shrink before coming in. Mandatory.

Another two from Olivia.

I called Ayanna. I’m worried about you, El. I didn’t tell her too many details, but she knows you are unavailable to work right now. Just stay home.

Please.

He prickles at the interference and he tries to ignore the annoyance at being babied. He’s a grown ass man who can handle his own life and compartmentalize well enough to function as the highly experienced detective he is. It’s not like he has never powered through work while a storm was brewing within him from personal turmoil. If anything, he fled to his job just to feel some stability. 

But he can admit he’s a little relieved to not deal with more bullshit, especially from IAB. And he is touched that these two important women care enough to prevent him from making his own life even more difficult.

Although the temptation of starting his car and driving away is strong, he deflates as he realizes that he has to stay, no matter how much he wants to run. 

Elliot doesn’t get to respond beyond a quick Thank you to his Sergeant (his I’m home to Liv is left unsent) before his daughters’ voices rise.

“I can’t believe you, Katie.”

“We talked about this together, Lizzie. You know I’m not attacking Dad and you know there is some truth to what I said.”

“But you’re treating him like he’s the main one in the wrong here!”

“No, I’m not! I know he’s a victim in this too. But Eli is the one who suffers the most from this big revelation. And the last thing he needs is for Dad to pull away from him, which is exactly what he’s doing right now!”

“You’re right, Katie.”

The two women abruptly stop. He feels the intensity of their gaze. But he only turns to face Kathleen. “You’re right. I am…I am running. Avoiding. Whatever you wanna call it.” His heart beats rapidly in his chest as he forces the words out, the anxiety of the night finally catching up to him with his admission. Feeling an edge of panic arising, he struggles to take deeper, calmer breaths. Elliot's eyes burn through the rearview, hoping to catch his fucking father on fire. 

God, he genuinely might be going insane.

His daughter sighs. “We understand the urge to run. I won’t act like I haven’t done it myself before. Unfortunately, it is a Stabler family trait,” Kathleen lets out a little laugh. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t change. We can learn new ways, healthier ways, to face our problems.”

“Just breathe, Dad. We’re right here. Just breathe,” Lizzie says quietly, probably giving him a taste of her 'healthier way' of dealing with hard shit. It soothes and warms him, the love from his daughters, the comfort that they are offering him. He can't help but divert his eyes once again to the back, hoping the haunting will finally stop, and when the cold gaze of his father finally melts away from the warmth of his daughters, disappearing completely, his harsh pants ease into soft, deep breaths, his heart beats at a slower tempo. He can feel the throbbing in his knuckles directly now, and he shuts his eyes in slight pain. His shoulders loosen with the continuous motions of his daughter’s gentle hands. He can feel everything, but he’s calmer. 

He’s silent. Contemplative. He was trying to convince himself this entire afternoon that he wasn’t running headfirst into his work to avoid the hurt he felt, but he knew it was a bold-faced lie. And he knows that he should listen to his daughters. 

He sniffles. “I don’t want Eli to hurt. He's had enough of it for a lifetime.”

“So go back inside and help him. Be his dad. Be our dad. The loving, caring, and sometimes crazy and very protective dad we know you are. You know how it feels to be rejected and insecure about crying or just showing emotion. Be honest about how you feel. Show him that you are different. Prove to him that when things get hard, you will stay. That you’ll still love him.”

She reaches for his injured hand again, seeking affection and somehow forgetting about his bloody knuckles because she squeezes it, making him wince. With an apology, she tries retreating, but he just shakes his head and pulls her hand to his lips, smooching the top of it loudly. 

He then reaches for Lizzie’s hand with his other, her grip still on his shoulders, and kisses her palm before squeezing her hand. His eyes become wet. “I’m so proud of you. You both mean the world to me. I hope you know that. I’m so lucky to know you and have you all as mine. I love you. So, so much.”

Lizzie speaks first. “We love you, too, Dad.” 

“And we’re proud to be yours. All of us.” 

All of us. 

My children. Mine. 

Everything seems clear now. 

He needs to talk to his son. 

Only four minutes pass before Olivia replies to Eli’s message.

Once he sent the initial message asking to come over, he threw his phone onto the bed, a small part of him afraid that she would actually say no to him despite what Noah had texted him before. It made a small thud as it hit the card still resting on his bed. 

He picks it up from under the weight of his phone, tearing it open as he sits on his bed. 

While Olivia might have written his name neatly on the envelope, the card inside was clearly homemade and created by Noah. He huffs out a small laugh at the rough drawing of what appears to be a bald soccer coach in a yellow uniform holding up a red card, with the handwritten caption, ‘This card is for you!’

He opens the card and something slips out, falling to the bed. He is taken aback by the small picture he picks up, pulling it closer to his face like he isn’t seeing it clearly. 

He stares in awe as he registers that he is looking at a younger Olivia Benson, badge shining on her hip, the backdrop of what he thinks is the SVU precinct appears to be almost empty, just one or two distant officers, but no one he recognizes is hovering in the frame. She’s sitting on a swivel chair with a little blonde boy, maybe three or four years old, squirming on her lap. Her arms are wrapped around his small body tightly and she has a shining smile as she tucks her face into the boy’s tiny neck, appearing as if she is tickling him. The boy is beaming, frozen with laughter, and Eli could see his tiny arms are holding onto her arms encircling him. 

For a moment, he doesn’t process what this picture is telling him. It doesn’t match what he knows about Olivia, or what he even knows about himself. Eli hasn’t really had any memories of his childhood in New York, and he barely remembers Olivia despite his dad’s recent stories about her being there when he was born and for the first few years of his life. 

He doesn’t see himself as this little boy in the picture, but he knows it must be him. 

He flips it over, curious if there is anything on the back. 

‘Eli and Olivia’ is written in blue ink on the top left, but it’s scratched out.

‘Eli and his Libby’ fits just below it, written in black ink with the date - April 2010 - on the bottom right corner. Eli can immediately recognize his dad’s handwriting. 

He doesn’t know what to call the emotion he is feeling, but he flips the picture over again, stares at it until it feels like the image comes to life in his head, like it awakens a memory from years ago, an entirely different lifetime. But he knows he doesn’t actually remember, being way too young. He just burned the image into his brain, solidifying its existence from this moment on.

He slides the picture into the book he is currently reading—some sci-fi collection that Lizzie had mentioned he might enjoy—and places the book carefully inside of his duffle bag. 

Eli picks up the birthday card again, very aware that he is on the verge of tears again. 

Who knew today would be so emotional for him?

19 seems like such an insignificant milestone. 

He notices that the inside of the card is full of writing on both sides; the left is kind of sloppy, the words uneven, written in various sizes, and the sentences becoming slanted as it reaches the bottom, while the right side is elegant, each word appearing as if they were carefully and slowly written, a cursive flare that makes some words hard to decipher as the letters loop in and around each other. 

Before he starts reading, he sees another caption at the top left.

‘18 is Out! Ejected! Disqualified! Done! 19 is in!’

The cheesiness and excessive references to soccer makes Eli smile. He appreciates how much effort Noah put into just making the card himself instead of buying a generic one at the store, and he loves even more that Noah pays attention to his interests, even if it might seem to be a bit overkill.

Eli reads Noah’s side first. 

Happy Birthday Eli!  

I hope you enjoy your special day even 

more with this special card made by a special person 

with even more special gifts for you :)

I’m happy that I met you at 18 (when I was 11) and 

now I know you at 19 (when I’m 12) because

I don’t know if I would have liked you at 17 

(10 year old me hated sports with a fiery passion

but I grew out of that) Now I hope that 

I will keep knowing you when 

you are 20, 21, 22, 23…

And who knows, maybe I could get 

you into dance when you’re 20.

I am glad to have you as my friend

and I hope that you see me as your friend too.

(Ps Don’t expect me to be this sappy all the time.

It’s a special occasion.)

– Noah

And then he shifts to Olivia’s side, thinking it will be nice and short like Noah’s, but it’s more.

Eli,

You don’t know how crazy it is for me to 

think about you turning 19 years old. 

I still remember holding you for the first time.  

You were so tiny, screaming at the top of 

your lungs. You were the biggest surprise for 

your parents, and you came into this world with 

a bang. I knew that you were going to be 

special as soon as I held you in my arms.

(And maybe my favorite of the Elliot Stablers. 

Don’t tell your dad)  :) 

I know you might not really know me anymore 

and I wish that I got to see you become 

the sweet, wonderful, smart, and amazing 

person that you are now, but I’m happy 

to start fresh now that we are back in 

each other’s lives.  

I found this picture of us when I was sorting 

through some of my old boxes. I have loads of 

pictures of all you guys that barely saw 

the light of day. (I am truly horrible at organizing 

all the stuff buried in my closet) I think you 

were about three years old. I’ve always loved 

you guys like my own.

Happy Birthday, Eli.

With love, your ‘Libby’

Eli sniffles, feeling a soreness deep in his chest. He rubs his hand over his heart, hoping to relieve the ache. He then grips onto his chain, an anchor as he tries to gather himself. 

He thinks he might understand his sisters now, their unwavering love and adoration for Olivia, their insistence that she is (and has been) an important figure within their family. He thinks of all the times she showed up for him, realizing now it went beyond the past few years; thinks of all the stories his siblings had told him, his dad’s soft voice, thick with reverence as he recounted his glory days at SVU with his partner.

Yeah, he understands now.

His phone buzzes beside him. He reads the message Olivia had sent him.

Of course, Eli. You can stay for the weekend if you want. Just make sure somebody knows where you’re going. Do you need me to come get you?

Eli glimpses at the time on his screen. It’s a little late in the evening for her to drive from Manhattan to Long Island City and back, especially because he knows that she wouldn’t leave Noah at home alone, opting to take him with her for the ride instead. He doesn’t want to inconvenience her more than he already is anyway.

nah i can figure something out. thank you liv.

The next reply is immediate. 

You sure? I don’t mind. And I don’t want you to take a cab this late.

Eli smiles at her obvious mom behavior.

yah. i won’t, promise. i’ll ask liz or katie for aride. packing an overnight bag rn. 

He pauses, a frown on his face, before sending another text.

have you heard from my dad?

The label makes his hands warm with a sheen of sweat. He hopes that doesn’t last forever. He sees the three dots pop up, signaling her incoming reply. He waits with his phone in one hand, the other coming up to rest over his mouth, his knee bouncing in anticipation.

I haven’t, but I talked to his boss. He is supposed to stay home. 

With that response, he gets up to finish packing his bag. It should have made him happy that his dad couldn’t rush back into his job, but it didn’t. He still wasn’t here. 

If he wasn’t at work, then where the hell was he?