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She drops three inches of height easily when she toes her heels off at the door. She hadn’t planned to be in them that long, drifting from Fin’s hospital bed unexpectedly to 1PP meant an extra hour or more in the black heels that pinched her toes all wrong after a long day. She peels her blazer off, half tempted to bunch the offensive item up as she finally begins to relax into the silence of her apartment. Chief Tynan’s words still ring in her ears, about her grand plans, and Olivia tries to leave the unsettled feeling she got with them at the door with her heels.
As Olivia pads into the kitchen, she stops, smirking as she spots the finger of whisky in a crystal glass waiting for her on the breakfast bar. She wraps her fingers around the glass, and takes a grateful sip. She puts the whiskey back down and peeks into Noah’s room, satisfied to see her son deep asleep, sprawled across the bed like any 14-year-old boy with limbs he’s quickly growing into.
She shuts the door with a grateful sigh and heads back towards the kitchen. She plucks the glass off her breakfast bar once again and makes her way to her bedroom. As she grows closer, she hears the sound of the shower in her en suite shut off and God a shower– sounded divine right now. She wants to use the melt she buys at the farmer’s market, smiling at the memory of picking some up when she’d taken Bernie with her that past Saturday. The older woman had slipped a couple extra in, flashing Elliot’s credit card to her before slipping it to the vendor.
She opens the door to her bedroom just as steam pours from the bathroom. And there’s Elliot, toweling off his bald head as he comes through the door, with another one of her fluffy, expensive towels slung low around his waist. She’s seen him change, in varying states of undress, even when they were partners, so it’s not novel, not really. But for some reason, seeing him doing all of that, in her bedroom tonight, knocks the wind from her chest.
“Hey.” He smiles tossing the towel in the hamper–that’s definitely only meant for clothes–before moving towards the duffel bag perched on the end of her bed.
She wants to scowl, fuss at him but she’s too busy indulging in the freedom to stare at the broad expanse of his back, damp from the shower, with beads of water trickling along the column of his spine. Her eyes drift down to the glass in her hand, then over to the bathroom where the mirror is just starting to clear up, as the whir of the fan fills the quiet of her bedroom.
Olivia downs the rest of the whiskey and sets the glass on her dresser before approaching him. It’s all too easy– the way she rests her chin on his shoulder, hands on his biceps, and her fingers itch to drift down and caress his tattoo on his right forearm.
Olivia settles for licking a droplet of water off his trap instead.
“When I asked if you could pick up Noah–” she murmurs against his skin before moving up the column of his neck, “–that didn’t mean you could use my shower,” she finish low in his ear before she pulls back, tempted to close her lips over his earlobe– but she once again restrains herself. As she walks towards the bathroom, Olivia hooks a finger into his towel, taking it with her.
And the bastard stands there nude, unashamed, and continues to rummage through his duffel bag for his pajamas before he shrugs. “I was at the gym when you called.”
She tosses the towel into the proper hamper and decides against hopping in a shower of her own for now. Instead, she leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. She watches him scratch the bridge of his nose with his thumb before he tosses the duffel bag into her catch-all chair and starts to change.
“Since Noah is currently in his ‘wearing a full can of Axe phase,’ I don’t think he noticed, but I did. And so would you.”
A delicate chuckle bubbles from Olivia’s chest as she nods in agreement. “Maybe you can talk to him tomorrow about how to wear it and have it not wear you.”
And she loves the way Elliot beams, at the thought of continuing to build a bond with her son, who first met Elliot when he only came up to the middle of his torso. Now, he’s almost as tall as him, and it startles her that the more time they spent together, the more they look alike.
It’s wishful thinking, of course. But for the first time in 57 years, Olivia could indulge in such a thing. The last seven months, particularly the last four, had been a wakeup call for her. His accident, his mother, his brother, Maria, and now Don.
Don. She lets out a shaky breath, as her mind drifts to the call she’d gotten in July. A home health nurse telling her his health had been failing. And she’d wanted to chicken out, delay the ending she knew was coming. Eventually, she learned Elliot had gotten the same call.
“We could go see him together,” he said.
And when he’d proposed the idea, they’d been on the phone, another one of their late night talks they’d been trying to do a few times a week since his accident.
And she couldn’t find a reason to say no. So they went, leaning on one another. She’s not sure her fingers ever unlaced from his the whole drive there or back.
And they’d been leaning on each other ever since.
They’d stepped back in sync like no time had elapsed.
Partners.
Just different.
Change.
Fucking change.
This change she’s glad for, though, as she strides back over to him now that he's dressed, wrapping her arms around his middle from the side, and she feels the material of his worn NYPD t-shirt. She’s almost tempted to demand he hand it over– a luxury she loves indulging in– and let the scent of him overwhelm her and calm her simultaneously. But, she knows she’s got another shirt he’s left here tucked away in her drawer, ready for the shape of her body, so she decides against it for now.
Elliot’s expression changes, from gratitude, to concern. “What happened at 1PP?”
Olivia lets out a breath, forcing a brave smile as she peers up at him. “Can I answer that after a shower?”
Elliot nods and presses a kiss to her forehead. “‘Course– want another whiskey?”
“Tea, but use the electric kettle so it doesn’t–”
“Wake Noah. I got it.” He drops a kiss to the crown of her head this time. “Go on.”
And Olivia isn’t annoyed that her shower still smells like him when she steps into her bathroom. She quickly sheds the rest of her clothes, clips her hair up and tosses one of the melts into the tub. The scents begin to mingle together, what's left of the musk of his body wash and the calming eucalyptus of her melt. Was that what "Benson and Stabler" smelled like? She suddenly loves that he'd showered before she got home. He’s left an empathic echo in her shower that hugs her, and as she steps inside she begins to let the water wash her body and her day away.
As the water swirls in the drain, soapy, tinted slightly pink from the pigment of her body wash, her thoughts swirl with it. Chief Tynan had presented her with the idea of the Deputy Chief job not as an advancement, but as an end point. Whatshisface at Don’s memorial had been right, she and Fin both had logged enough years for their full pensions, she knew that, she’s received more than one email about it.
And it also sounded less like the Chief wanted this for Olivia because of everything she's done in those thirty plus years, but instead for the optics. She’s the first person to understand that a woman in a position of power was going to have people waiting for her downfall from the get, simply because of her gender. And so Olivia’s benefit of the doubt for the new Chief ran deep. But something still sits uneasy in her stomach, with words like "consolidation" rushing through.
The Chief’s push for efficiency and fixating on how Olivia ran her squad room made her nervous system tilt off its axis. Right alongside how she felt after she'd easily accepted everything that had happened with Fin’s gun, but then gave her a personally selected detective to help while they were down a man. Olivia feels watched and tested, punished even, simply for not wanting to add “new job” to her list of changes.
She’d lost the closest thing to a father when the same home health nurse had called and told her (and Elliot on speakerphone) that Cragen had taken his final breaths. And maybe it’d brought her something so breathtaking grounding, as Elliot had pulled her into his side when the call ended, but, outside of him–them, no matter how tight she’d clung to his henley that night, she was really fucking tired of change.
But that was a problem for tomorrow’s Captain Olivia Benson. Right now she was Olivia, making a promise to herself to wash away the day with the soap that leaves her loofah and body, maybe talk about it with Elliot because–fuck–she had a partner she could do that with now, and then be up for an eight o’clock meeting at 1PP. She steps out of the shower, toweling off her body with her older scratchy towels with a slight eye roll before she tosses it in the hamper. She grabs the fluffy purple robe that had been a Christmas gift from Noah the year before, and finally exits the bathroom.
Elliot’s got her pajamas laid out on the bed and a steaming mug of tea waiting on her nightstand. Her lips quirk in a grateful smile as she disrobes and changes, pulling the shirt over her head that’s a little warm and smells like him. Her eyes drift to Elliot, as he sits up in her bed, patiently, checking his phone, and she realizes he’s changed shirts.
Into the one from her drawer.
The scent of him, fresh from the shower, like the strongest sedative she can handle, envelops her when the shirt comes to rest on her body. Olivia slips on her underwear and forgoes the pajama pants, tossing them on top of his duffel bag in the corner chair with her robe. Then, she crawls in bed next to him, forgoing the tea for the time being.
After three months and change, it usually doesn’t take long for her impatient but not partner to pull her in close, bury his nose in her hair, and drift off to sleep. But tonight, she beats him to the punch, tucking herself into his side. Her head goes to the pocket of his shoulder, and a leg between his.
Olivia’s hand slides across his chest, over his heart. She stays there for a moment, feeling the thrum of it beat beneath her fingertips. He’s real. He’s here, the beats tell her. Then her hand drifts again, down his right arm to his Marine Corps tattoo, and her fingers gently trace the globe, then the U.S.M.C.
She feels a smile into her hair as Elliot reaches up immediately to play with the ends. Then, she feels a kiss dropped to the crown before he asks, “wanna talk about it now? Or go to sleep?”
Olivia hums, truly contemplating, after ruminating on it and then some in the shower. She could bottle up what’s left of her feelings about it, like she has for 57 years. But she realizes she’s done with the deflection game, or she was trying to be at least, for him, to give them a fair shot. So she moves, resting her chin on his chest to look into his baby blues. Then she tells him, about their witness who got a visa, about Fin’s gun, about consolidating SVU across the five boroughs.
“And she wants me–” she starts slowly, tracing an absent pattern into the heathered pattern of his grey shirt, “–to think about the deputy chief job.” She bites her lip, letting him soak the information in as his hand continues to drift up and down the column of her spine.
And God he’s such a good listener. “Do you want to?”
“Told her my life’s had enough change and I’m nowhere near retirement.”
Elliot balks at first but makes a noncommittal expression. “It wouldn’t be too different.”
“I’d have way more people to babysit. She thinks my SVU is run best, so there’s no telling what the other boroughs are used to. And that’s a lot of detectives–.”
Elliot shrugs, pursing his lips. “You babysat me for 13 years.”
Olivia’s chest blooms with warmth and she presses up, moving to splay her hand across his heart again as she presses a quick kiss to the corner of his lips. “That’s true– and you caused enough trouble– maybe five boroughs worth of SVU detectives would be a walk in the park.”
He lets the slight pass, an amused quirk of his lips gracing his features instead. “Which means you can handle this,” he encourages. “You can handle anything, Liv.”
She sighs. “It’s not the amount of work that’s keeping me from taking the position. It’s the type of work I’d be in charge of. Instead of my focus being on victims, it would be getting the units not to compare dick sizes or start pissing contests. She says it’s for efficiency, but– fuck I don’t know El–” She scrubs a hand across her face. “No efficiency is worth a victim losing out on proper support and justice.”
Elliot nods in agreement, carding a hand through her hair. “So you turned her down.”
“I did. And I don’t know if she’s gonna take no for an answer but hopefully she’ll see that keeping things separate, letting me lead my squad and my squad alone– especially as we get a whole new fucking detective– that she picked out by the way– it’s for the best.”
His hand stops, squeezing her in close, her face having no choice but to squish against his pec, as he nods against her hair. His touch grounds her, like it’s done almost every day for the past three and a half months, like it did outside of Don’s memorial in front of her car. She breathes easy for the first time since she left Chief Tynan’s office as the scent of Elliot Stabler fills her lungs.
They lie like that for a few minutes, and she thinks he may even be half asleep, until there’s a grin against her hair. “You gotta admit, though, Deputy Chief Benson sounds pretty sexy.” His arm tugs her by the waist until her body rolls on top of his.
And Olivia rolls her eyes, feeling him already stirring in his sweatpants. She clicks her tongue, lightly shoving the pocket of his shoulder. “You and your rank kink.” She shakes her head, winding an arm behind his.
“You kink shaming me, Captain?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Detective.” She leans in, kissing him properly for what felt like the first time in days.
And it’s true. There’d been quick domestic pecks out the door and while she never used to let herself dream of a world where those kind of kisses would be shared with Elliot Fucking Stabler, she missed this, missed them, and craves how much their dynamic had changed in a matter of months.
It was living proof that it had, along with these deep slow kisses that had her seriously contemplating if oxygen is really necessary for her body to continue functioning. Their tongues slide along one another and she shuffles, widening her hips to properly straddle his lap as his hand presses into the small of her back.
She feels his hand ruck the shirt up, touching the skin, the dimples on either side of her spine just above her underwear. Olivia grins against his lips before pulling off them with a pop.
“You have to be in Brooklyn by 7,” she murmurs. “And I’ve got a meeting at 8,” she warns.
“You started this,” he teases, “having a change of heart?”
She smiles, shaking her head before she kisses him again. She lets him pull the shirt up and over her head, it flutters to the floor next to them and their lips meet once more.
They both push their meetings to nine.