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Olivia Benson was surprised when she first called what she was doing with her former partner and on again, off again best friend dating. She was surprised with how emotive he could be, how classically romantic. It simply felt out of sync with the man she walked side by side with nearly daily for twelve straight years in her relative youth. In contrast, she remembered being the one to find gifts for his wife, to remind him of their important dates. He loved his wife, of that she was sure, but their domesticity had settled into a life of obligations, of holding onto commitments one day at a time and sometimes forgetting. So, she’d remembered them for him. She’d see the pieces she picked out for Kathy on her sometimes and smile. Kathy would share a knowing look. She wasn’t in the dark.
Olivia wasn’t sure when he had changed. There was a ten year knowledge gap they had not yet been able to bridge fully. Maybe the change happened when he lived in Italy. He said that he was happy there. That could have changed the way he understood and interacted in relationships. Or maybe it was after Kathy died that he reevaluated things and decided that he needed to express to the people he loves his caring and commitment often and clearly. Olivia understood what a loss like that could do. It changed everything.
It started for her when he gave her that compass. The thought in that gesture bowed her over, left her crying into her pillow later that night, and the truth was, she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready for what she knew the gesture meant. She wasn’t ready to forgive him. So, she ran away for a while, lent the compass out, partially because she really thought that it would offer Maddie’s mom peace, partially because she did not feel she really deserved it. She was still intent on punishing herself for not saving Maddie when she had the first opportunity. She had it back now, and carried it with her even when she did not wear it.
The thing about Elliot Stabler was that he did not give up. Even if absolutely everything else changed in their ten year separation, his stubborn nature did not. He was not deterred when she denied him multiple times, when she lashed out at him for the real hurt he caused her over the years. He didn’t push, but he did not go away.
At first, in the theros of his trauma, that unwillingness to give up came across in messy, harmful ways. Showing up at her apartment in the middle of the night, drugged and wanting to discuss a letter Kathy wrote that had so many layers of meaning she would never fully understand it; declaring his love publicly at an illbethought family intervention; pushing her away and pulling her back in, but only ever asking about the lovers before him rather than the demons that came calling for her after he left.
She pulled back then, told him to get help, and to her greatest surprise, he eventually did. It was after that they started to find their footing again. He must have done some research into what she liked now because he started to find ways to reveal what he knew. He’d show up at the precinct with her favorite coffee, cook her favorite meal on evenings they spent together. He went out of his way once to get a hold of a bottle of her favorite red wine, the one she discovered on her Paris trip with Tucker.
He was gentle with her, sensitive in the bedroom, and when the time came, he listened to her intently, provided her the support she so longed for after Lewis tried to destroy her life. He even listened without being defensive about how much his actions had hurt her in the wake of that. It was like a dream, an imagining she never thought would come true.
Dating Elliot was truly like getting to know someone entirely new sometimes. Of course she had pictured it throughout the years, what it would be like to be with him. She imagined passion in their lovemaking, like water bursting through a dam that had held ten years longer than it was supposed to, and there was that. There was no question about their sexual compatability, but there was also so much more. She had thought that she knew him so well over the years, but she had come to learn that every person is a thousand different versions of himself, and she was learning several hundred new renditions of Elliot. She imagined being with him would be like coming home, settling into a well worn couch and finding comfort in the predictability, but it was really an adventure, showing her different sides of herself as well.
Losing Donald Cragen was the first truly shared loss they’d experienced as a couple. Of course she had thought of Don as a mentor throughout her life, as a father figure when she had no other. Elliot did, too, in a different way. Their shared mourning was both a balm and deep crevasse in a loss that felt so wholly individual at times. Elliot came to Don’s memorial gathering late, and she only saw him in passing as she left to respond to a city that needed her.
“I love you,” he told her as she left. It was something she had yet to reciprocate. It felt too final when she still felt some degree of insecurity. Everybody left. He had, in the past, and if it happened again, she did not want to be in the position of having given him that before he did.
When she came to work the next morning and found the flowers waiting for her on her desk, beautiful, elegant, and perfect, the note telling her the same thing he had said so many times, Thinking of you, Liv. I love you , she realized that not saying it did not stop her from giving it. She already had.
The flowers were a testament to everything she was learning to love about the version of Elliot she was seeing, about the man she had both grown to love anew and loved all along. They were a mix of her favorites - irises, carnations, peonies, and small wildflowers. They were her. They were him telling her he saw who she really was, telling her he knew she was hurting and he wanted to comfort her even as he was, too.
Before the hustle of what was sure to become a busy day, she took out her phone and pushed on her most recent contact.
“Hey, Liv,” Elliot answered on the first ring. “How are you?”
“I got the flowers,” she responded. “I love you, too.”