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The dishwasher has been running for twenty minutes and neither of them has moved.
That’s how Olivia knows she’s home. Not the apartment, which somehow still feels new, despite the fact that she knows its dimensions in the dark and the way the second floorboard inside the bedroom door groans when she steps on it.
No, home is this. Elliot’s chest rising and falling under her cheek, the warm weight of his arm around her. The unhurried movement of his fingers through her hair. The soft murmur from the TV, something about the migration patterns of arctic terns. The dishwasher humming in the kitchen.
She’s splayed on top of him, legs stretched down the length of the couch, her head resting over his heart. He’s half-sitting up, half-not, pillows rearranged at some point after dinner into something that works exactly for this so that neither of their backs will hurt in the morning.
From down the hall, she hears Noah’s sudden burst through his closed door: ”DUDE. DUDE! No – no – YES!!”, followed by the kind of shriek that means either a catastrophic virtual death or an unlikely victory. Elliot’s chest shakes beneath her, and she smiles, eyes half-closed.
“He’s fine,” she says.
“I know.” His fingers don’t stop moving. “You okay?”
She considers his question the same way she considers most of Elliot’s questions - seriously, because with Elliot the question is almost never casual. Not Are you okay physically? or Do you need a glass of water?, although he certainly takes care of her in that way too, but Where are you right now, in your head?
“I’m getting there.”
He doesn’t push. He rarely does anymore, just holds the door open for her and lets her walk through it in her own time.
She burrows closer, and his hand moves, broad and warm between her shoulderblades, holding her to him.
* * * * *
The arctic terns complete their migration, the narrator’s voice telling them that they’ll do it all again next year. Olivia’s eyes are on the screen without really watching, Velasco’s words running through her head.
Is SVU still that place for you?
It used to scare her, thinking of herself without SVU. It still does; it’s so deeply ingrained in her that she doesn’t quite know who she’d be without it, but for the first time in her life she also knows she has a soft place to land if and when she decides she’s done.
Elliot’s fingers are moving more deliberately through her hair now, massaging the back of her head in that way he knows she loves, and she almost melts when he hits a particular spot right below her left ear.
She lies quiet, eyes somewhere off in the distance. Outside, a siren passes and fades.
“Joe Velasco asked me something today,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“He asked me if SVU is still the place where I’m doing the most good.”
The fingers in her hair falter, then continue.
“What did you tell him?”
She sighs against him. “I told him I didn’t know.” She hears it again in her own voice - not deflection, not avoidance. Just the plain truth of it, small and strange.
Elliot is quiet for a long moment. The dishwasher shifts into its second cycle in the kitchen.
“Y’know, it’s okay to put your badge down, Liv,” he says finally, carefully.
She stills against him.
“You’ve given more of yourself to this job than anyone I know,” he goes on. “More than is fair to ask of anyone.” He doesn’t say it like an argument, just like the fact it is.
“You know, I told Velasco I’d puncture his other lung if he told me I should retire.”
Elliot huffs, that particular half-laugh he reserves for when she says exactly the thing he expects her to.
“Sounds like you,” he says, his mouth close to her ear. “But that’s not what I’m saying.”
“I know.”
“And I would never–” He stops, then starts again, softer. “I would never tell you what to do, Liv. You know that. Any way you wanna do it, I’m with you.”
And there it is. The thing she wasn’t expecting, although maybe she should have been; it’s him, after all.
The flash is brief; a different setting, a different year, a different kind of hurt. His voice in the car, clumsy but so, so sure: Any way you wanna do it, I’ll support you. And later, a conversation held outside an elevator, where she’d let herself be rawer and more vulnerable than she’d ever let herself be with anyone else.
Elliot, a few months ago I looked into adoption.
That’s great.
They turned me down.
What are you talking about?
Well, I’m single, I don’t have an extended support system, I work all hours. They didn’t see me as prime parent material.
They’re wrong.
He’d meant it then, all of it; she’d known it even if she hadn’t known where to place it. And then life had split them apart in all the ways life knows how to do, and they’d lost years to it, years she used to catalogue with a particular kind of grief.
She doesn’t anymore.
They’re here. Here. There is a fifteen year old boy down the hall screaming at his computer. Fresh flowers in her office every week. (Fresh flowers not in her office right now, but even so.) His hands in her hair, gentle in a way nobody would ever believe from looking at him. She no longer has to go back to that old grief if she doesn’t want to.
“I know,” she says instead. “That’s one of the reasons I love you.”
She feels him breathe.
“Yeah?” he says, and there’s something in it - something soft and old and undone, even now.
“Yeah.” She shifts against him, her hand spreading flat over his chest. “You know what SVU is to me. What it’s always been.”
“I know.” A pause. “I was there.”
“You were there,” she agrees, her fingers tightening slightly in his shirt before relaxing again. Nineteen years of there, thirteen of them side by side, until they weren’t. She doesn’t let herself stay in it. “I’m not falling apart over this, I promise.”
“I know you’re not,” he says again. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not hard on you.”
“Tynan wants me to feel like this.” The words rush out of her. “She knew exactly what she was doing. The suspension, the timing of it… making me walk into my own squad room and stand there while Fin ran point.”
She can feel herself getting worked up despite herself.
“It’s not even the suspension.” She stares at the TV without seeing it. “It’s the way she did it. Like I’m suddenly some kind of liability after twenty-eight years of giving this job everything I have.”
“You’re not a liability.”
His words come out immediate and sharp enough that she looks up at him. Old protective anger flickers in his eyes.
“You’ve held that place together for years, Liv,” he tells her. Proud.
He’s so earnest about it that it makes her chest tighten. The anger slowly drains out of her, and what’s left underneath is just the tiredness of it all. She reaches up and strokes his cheek down to his jaw, and he turns into her touch, eyes softening as they meet hers.
“I don’t know, Elliot,” she says, turning the words over in her head. “Maybe she’s right, in some way. Maybe it is time for me to walk away.” She swallows. “I’m just not sure who I am without it.”
“Liv. You’d still be you.” His hand slides slowly up and down her back, fingers tracing her spine. “If you wanna fight Tynan and get SVU back, I’m behind you. If you wanna walk away tomorrow and start a foundation and scare politicians into funding shelters?” His mouth lifts at the corner. “You’d be great at that, too.”
She laughs softly. “You really think I’d scare politicians?”
“Baby.” The pet name slips out of him; she hasn’t quite decided yet whether she loves it or hates it. “You scare me sometimes.”
“Well good, that’s just healthy,” she quips.
He pinches her side, and she lets out a soft squeal.
“If you wanna move to Vermont and open a bed and breakfast–”
“I’m not moving to Vermont.”
“–I would give Vermont serious consideration, is all I’m saying.”
“Elliot.”
“Any version, Liv.” He rests his chin on top of her head, arms tightening around her. “Any version where you’re doing what matters to you, I’m there.”
She closes her eyes, suddenly struck by how long she spent believing she had to carry everything alone.
She thinks about who he was when she first met him - already carrying things he didn’t know how to put down, already someone who loved fiercely and imperfectly and too much all at once. She thinks about who he was when he came back; the grief that was written all over him, and how close he came to losing himself entirely to it. She knows he still has his demons; she’s not naive enough to think otherwise, and neither is he. But somewhere along the way, he stopped hiding from her. He shows up now, fully, every time, and meets her right where she is. In turn, it’s allowed her to stop hiding from him too.
It’s the thing she didn’t know she was missing until she had it. The thing she’d spent years trying to build with other people and never quite could, because the missing piece had always been him.
She lets herself sink into him. Some tight, exhausted part of her loosens a little further in his arms. Elliot’s hand resumes its slow path through her hair, fingertips scraping lightly against her scalp in a way that makes her feel pleasantly boneless.
The TV has switched to a documentary about deep ocean currents. Noah has gone quiet; she imagines him in a tense standoff of some kind, leaning towards the computer screen, jaw set the way it does when he’s focused. That familiar expression still catches her off guard sometimes - how he’s somehow both her and Elliot, without biologically belonging to either of them. The universe must’ve known what it was doing after all.
Outside, the city moves through the late evening, not caring one bit. In here, the TV casts its glow over them, and it’s just his breathing and hers.
She doesn’t mean to move. Or maybe she does; something about all of this, about the way he makes space for all of her without asking for anything back, makes her feel safe in a way she’s never felt with anyone else, makes her want to be closer to him.
She pushes herself up on one arm and looks at him. She knows his face like she knows her own; the lines of it, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He meets her gaze; clear, warm, a little something else - that thing she used to pretend not to see in his face and she’s so glad she doesn’t have to pretend anymore.
She leans in and kisses him. Just slow at first, her mouth lazy against his, her hand braced against his firm chest. His hand comes up to her jaw, tracing it lightly before she feels him slide it back around to her neck, holding her steady against him as he nips on her bottom lip, coaxing her mouth open. She sighs into him, and he swallows the sound like he’s been waiting for it. His tongue finds hers, deepening the kiss before he breaks away just enough to trail kisses from her jaw to her cheek, down the line of her throat. She tips her head back without even thinking, giving him whatever he wants. His mouth is warm against the hollow of her throat, and she wants more of it, more of him, more–
She can’t get close enough; the angle is all wrong and she pulls back for a second, swinging one leg across his. It takes a moment of minor logistical renegotiation - move, move, wait - and then she’s finally settled in his lap, knees pushed deep into the couch cushions on either side of him, her body flush against his, and his hands find her hips like they’ve already held them a thousand times before.
She kisses him again, more demanding this time, and he meets her halfway with the same urgency. He makes a sound against her mouth, something that isn’t a word but that comes from deep inside of him, and his grip on her hips tightens, his thumbs pressing against the jut of her hipbones through the fabric of her yoga pants. She holds his face in her hands, slanting her lips against his over and over again. She can feel the slight scratch of the stubble on his jaw, the heat of his skin, the way he angles up against her, like he can’t get enough of her. The feeling is mutual; she could do this forever - just this, him, the specific way he kisses her like she’s the only thing that matters.
She comes up for air, her lips still resting a breath away from his.
“Hi,” he breathes.
“Hi,” she whispers back.
His hands sweep low, slow and deliberate, down over the curve of her ass, giving her a squeeze before pulling her to him just enough that she can feel exactly what she does to him. She grins against his lips, delighted and a little smug, biting back the noise that almost escapes her. One of his hands slides back up, tracing the hem of her shirt, fingers brushing warm against the skin underneath, and goosebumps follow in their wake. She feels his smile against her mouth.
“Elliot…” she warns.
“Living room,” he says, meaning I know.
“Yeah.”
Still, she shifts her weight forward, hands moving from his face to his shoulders, rocking herself slowly against him. She feels his grip on her ass, his other hand winding through the hair at the nape of her neck, holding her to him. He kisses her slow and thorough, one kiss deepening into another until she loses count, until she’s not thinking about anything anymore, not Tynan or the weight of her badge, and just–
“AAAAH. MY EYES!!”
She startles so hard her elbow catches him in the ribs, and he makes a sound that is distinctly different from the ones he was making a moment ago.
Noah is standing at the kitchen island in socked feet and a hoodie that says NYPD across the chest in faded letters, both arms thrown dramatically over his face. He sways backward, making a sound like a wounded animal.
“I came out here for a snack,” he announces to the ceiling. “For a snack, mom. And instead I get–” He gestures blindly in their general direction, “This.”
“Oh my God,” Olivia mutters, sliding off Elliot’s lap with as much dignity as she can while Elliot laughs helplessly next to her.
She clears her throat, smooths her shirt down. Her cheeks are on fire. Elliot’s shoulders are still shaking, and she grins despite herself. There’s something mortifying about the entire situation, but she can’t help but feel deliriously happy, in a way she used to think she never would.
“The kitchen,” she says to Noah, “is in that direction.” She points even though he can’t see her.
“I’m going to need therapy!” Noah wails. He still hasn’t lowered his arms.
“You’ll be fine,” Elliot says, his voice now admirably steady for a man whose shirt is somewhat untucked.
Noah finally peels one arm away from his face and opens one eye, scanning the room with overly dramatic caution. He spots his mother and Elliot sitting next to each other instead of on top of each other, and seems to judge it sufficiently safe.
Noah’s mouth curves as he catches Olivia’s eyes. He quickly tries to hide it, but he is, she notes - has always been - her kid, through and through. Noah loves Elliot, she knows that; he’s taken to him in the exact way she knew he would, the way that once scared her, but doesn’t now.
“Traumatizing,” he declares. “Actually traumatizing.” He points accusingly at both of them. “This is why I wear headphones.”
With that he walks over to the fridge, grabbing the desired snack, and quickly retreats back to his room, throwing them both a small, knowing smile on the way. The door closes resolutely behind him.
A beat passes. Then they look at each other and Olivia throws her head back against the couch and laughs - the real kind, the kind that starts somewhere low. She laughs so hard tears fill her eyes.
“Oh my god,” she wheezes, looking at him again.
He’s beaming at her, that full unguarded thing she’s been waiting her entire life for, and shakes his head.
“Good kid,” he says, pulling her back to him.
“He’s a nightmare,” she says fondly.
She settles back against him - both legs across his lap this time, his hand warm on her ankle. Her head tips against his shoulder, and he reaches up and tucks a strand of hair back from her face, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
On the TV, the waves roll across the ocean.
She doesn’t know yet, what she’ll do. She doesn’t know if she’ll fight Tynan or build something new she hasn’t thought of yet. She doesn’t know what SVU looks like without her, or what she looks like without SVU at the center of her.
What she does know is right here. Him, solid next to her, with her. Down the hall, her son, laughing loudly at something on his headset.
Any way she wants to do it.
She closes her eyes. In the kitchen, the dishwasher beeps its completion.
She’ll figure it out.