Lols @ ESPN. and ETA because, SVU fic!
Everyone wish microgirl8225 a happy birthday, because she's fantastic and deserves to have an amazing day!
ESPN party planner is entirely too funny. I so love the ad execs at ESPN; they're brilliant.
UHM, WHUT THEY GOT SAM THE MINUTEMAN TO MAKE FUN OF BRETT FAVRE IN AN ESPN COMMERCIAL?!?!? Believe it.
Fifteenth and final Red Sox game of the season, pour moi this evening. And Lester is pitching, which is exciting because I haven't seen him pitch this season!
Hey, let's take a moment to bitch about baseball coverage on ESPN. <- angered.
Just got Ingrid Michaelson's new album; also got Imogen Heap's new one. You already know what I think about Immi, ♥. I'll letcha know about Ingrid.
title: All Over (Now)
pairing: Elliot/Olivia
rating: mature
words: something like 2,000.
spoilers: the Oregon arc, let's call it.
thanks to both lowriseflare and lauridsen09 for their much-needed help. :)
summary: Small steps, it's always helpful to remind herself... small steps.
And all you know and how you speak
Countless lovers undercover of the street
You know that I could use somebody
You know that I could use somebody
Someone like you.
‘Use Somebody’, Kings of Leon
-
Growing up was all about Manhattan; her mother needed to be in the city and most mornings she couldn't make her way to campus on the subway and so when Olivia was ten they got a brownstone in Midtown.
Two bedrooms, two baths, so that Serena could be sure her daughter would never have to watch her get sick the morning after. Two levels too, so the persistent bass of Nancy Sinatra wouldn't wake her daughter when mother decided she wanted to dance around the kitchen.
Manhattan was home, for her, the young Olivia and about a million up and comers, kids with trust funds, old money, new money and everyone else with more than a little to spare. A ten year old girl who had to learn the subway system, which bus went uptown, which went down, with the whole world thriving around her.
And so when she got enough of her own cash and was done floating from apartment to apartment, boyfriend to boyfriend it was Brooklyn. Brooklyn it had been since she was twenty-one and Brooklyn forever it would be.
On her way to the D she passes two or three pawn shops and every day, without fail, there's a shiny new guitar in the window. Detritus from the thousand or so young adults filtering in and out of the city every day, doing that make-or-break thing, most of them breaking. Most of them selling their instrument, their muse so they can fund the one-seventy back to Omaha.
One way.
It's always half-way to the Bridge when it hits her that maybe she should learn to play the guitar because it's easy and she needs a past time and when she's alone with herself it's just too quiet. Olivia needs to begin making noise again. There's been this lull, this rise and repeat that she's managed to fall into and there's not a bit of her that thinks that's okay. But what if it's hard? And what if she fails? And what if she's honestly not the person she's always known herself to be?
Sometimes Olivia likes to imagine she's going to take a trip out to JFK, point at the big board and buy a one way. Because she'll never be gone from here, ever. And even if she leaves, she'll never really have left anything behind.
-
Olivia stays; she never works, never progresses, just stays and it's a sort of evolving stasis she doesn't understand; he seems to fall into a rewind that he can’t snap out of, and it’s worse each shift.
It really is harder than it should be, always is, and she thinks yeah, it always will be.
Because the coffee and cruller he places on her desk are with a heavy hand and it's out of her before she can feign stopping it. "What Elliot, what?" And his jaw is clenched and so is hers and she thinks, yeah, this is how it's going to be from now on.
The two of them skirting around the chasm that's developed between them.
She saw it coming, and then she didn't; she doesn't think now, that she did, almost wishes she had, but if everything happens for a reason then there's some driving force behind all of this distance. The majority of all of this stems from him, but she's not blameless, really and she needs to stop pretending to be.
It's a not-so-autumn day and she's got her sleeves rolled up tightly to her elbows, ready to dig down and in. Down and away.
And it's hands on hips and staring him down as the rest of the bullpen flutters around them, accustomed to the Benson-Stabler by now, and even if not, everyone's heard tell.
Everything that has a beginning has to have an end and so one of them has to give; his shoulders are too broad and so he thinks it's his burden to carry all of the weight. Time for her to break, it's time. Her hands fit so seamlessly to her hips that it's no longer the stance of Olivia-who-is-agitated but just Olivia and she suggests in a loosening tone, "Let's take these across the street."
His head lifts and she grabs her breakfast and walks towards the door; he follows. It's all a wonder, why he's so angry and why she puts up with it and why they never bother talking about what they hate about what's going on.
Small steps, it's always helpful to remind herself... small steps.
-
It's her life that happens in these moments; each can be taken as separate instances to be assessed as such and some days, Olivia chooses the big picture over all of the small battles. So much easier that way, she comes to figure. The old adage about not getting any younger sneaks up on her at least once a day and thank goodness for small blessings and all of that.
Elliot brings her morning coffee and for some reason, the catching and releasing of that moment weeks before has made it that much easier to remember why they work so well together in the first place. Kathy still calls him, he sleeps through the night now and he's eating right-as right as Elliot Stabler can reasonably be asked to eat-and she knows all of this because he has told her. He's told her all of this between laughs and smiles and actual conversation.
They share again and there's a cavernous clenching in her chest as her soul seeks to remember that this is how they were before and this is how she wants to keep them forever. How selfish but there are some times when it's okay to accept that being selfish is acceptable and this is one of them.
His laugh is infectious and she's missed it more than she can actually manage to think about. They used to be friends and now they are again. They're friends, they're more but it's alright, just to be friends. That's more than fine, it really, really is.
The more she thinks about it, really, she comes to find that even if she tried to leave him, she'll never have really left at all.
Because she's part of that smile and has been for years.
It's good that they're friends; it really is. Back to the way things should be, really.
-
It's not Elliot's anger that causes it all to combust, it's her need for something to fill the gap between 35 and 40. She has nothing and it's in the quite-literal sense. There's a job and a man who isn't hers and a few friends and that's the be all and end all of who Olivia Benson is. She grocery shops and returns her Netflix and manages to find her way to yoga three times a week and she just is and it's beginning to kill her.
There's a hill, and she's about to leap right straight over it and she's researched no way to cope with what she hasn't got.
Who copes, anyway? There's enough in her savings for a shiny new sports car, but she's not a man, and when would she drive it?
Olivia feels transient in the most odd of ways, and no, she can't put her finger on it, anywhere near it.
There comes a time in life when it's alright to admit things to oneself and she realizes these things: when her mother was forty years old, she herself was fifteen; everyone she was friends with in high school was either married or divorced or dead; she's been in love three times and one time just happens to be currently.
It's funny, how things work out like that, from time to time. Funny how she's managed to regress because there is a particular song that reminds her of him, and a beer and everything else. It's a constant, how much she's reminded of the fact that she wants her partner. In every damned way possible. It's beyond wondering if it's because they're together every day and beyond the basic fact that he's attractive beyond what's reasonably normal. It has nothing to do with him being the one to save her once and again, it's none of that.
It's because, well, he's Elliot. And there's no one else that she'd stay with.
A night when she'd taken the subway in and he's got the sedan for the night. Whatever Elliot has been, he's always been sure to see to it that she's safe, and so he gives her a lift back to Brooklyn and they listen to David Allen Boucher and discuss how he's perfect for bedtime radio. What else is there to say? She avoids his eyes and he does his best not to notice and it's almost normal.
He asks her, "Did they do bedtime radio with him in Oregon?" and it's a simple question and there's no animosity in it, just perhaps some regret and it triggers something in her. They're outside of her building and the moment is too ripe, so real that she can imagine his arm sliding along the back of her seat.
It's too much.
And that's what throws it all to hell, with the, "Fuck, can I ever leave you?!"
-
She'd said it, and slammed the door and stormed up to her apartment like it was a final thing that they both knew it wasn't, like she was thirty years her junior. How. Fucking. Melodramatic. But buttons had been pushed and she'd responded like a powder keg. Olivia grips her head in her hands because it's entirely too appropriate; she's finally trapped. Really and truly.
Her back against the door and now, now she knows: it's all going to change. It's all going to change because she had to be the one to speak up. Because he won't let that go, she knows he won't.
She knows him and he knows her and they both know what that means.
And so when his knock comes, strong and solid, she prepares to meet a vicious gaze when she swings the door open.
But there's no time.
And time stops.
But there's none of it left, timeless.
Elliot's hands are on her face and he has her back against the breakfast bar, his leg kicking at the door behind him. It hits her now that she never bought that guitar, never learned how to play, but the words he is speaking to her will make up for all of the silence in her life. And the scent-what he does to her senses-of him, what she's been smelling for the past how many years, and it is all over her.
'How long?' she wants to ask, but knows his answer will mirror hers and that would be too much, so she just allows Elliot’s tongue to press against hers and let’s him push her jacket from her shoulders.
There are markings all over her pillows from where she's dropped the pen doing the Sunday crossword in bed. Dirty clothes are strewn about and her bedside table doesn't function but that doesn't particularly matter when he walks her back until her knees hit the edges of the bed and she falls.
There was always an inherent knowledge that someday this would happen, whether she really admitted it or not. And at least she knew herself, because for years, this was how it was going to be. Post-argument, too raw, too real. What surprises her, what totally knocks the wind from her lungs is how fast they move together, how quickly his hands move from her hips to her breasts, seek underneath her clothing.
When he presses into her, their gazes are locked; she can't think.
"Do. Not. Even. Breathe," he whispers and it's hot against her eye lids. What else is there to do but suffocate beneath him as he pleads again, "God, don't breathe."
But she takes a breath for the first time in what feels like forever and clutches his back so tightly she's sure her fingers will leave marks.
comments (always welcome)
criticism (equally welcome, as long as it's constructive)
ESPN party planner is entirely too funny. I so love the ad execs at ESPN; they're brilliant.
UHM, WHUT THEY GOT SAM THE MINUTEMAN TO MAKE FUN OF BRETT FAVRE IN AN ESPN COMMERCIAL?!?!? Believe it.
Click to viewFifteenth and final Red Sox game of the season, pour moi this evening. And Lester is pitching, which is exciting because I haven't seen him pitch this season!
Hey, let's take a moment to bitch about baseball coverage on ESPN. <- angered.
Just got Ingrid Michaelson's new album; also got Imogen Heap's new one. You already know what I think about Immi, ♥. I'll letcha know about Ingrid.
title: All Over (Now)
pairing: Elliot/Olivia
rating: mature
words: something like 2,000.
spoilers: the Oregon arc, let's call it.
thanks to both lowriseflare and lauridsen09 for their much-needed help. :)
summary: Small steps, it's always helpful to remind herself... small steps.
And all you know and how you speak
Countless lovers undercover of the street
You know that I could use somebody
You know that I could use somebody
Someone like you.
‘Use Somebody’, Kings of Leon
-
Growing up was all about Manhattan; her mother needed to be in the city and most mornings she couldn't make her way to campus on the subway and so when Olivia was ten they got a brownstone in Midtown.
Two bedrooms, two baths, so that Serena could be sure her daughter would never have to watch her get sick the morning after. Two levels too, so the persistent bass of Nancy Sinatra wouldn't wake her daughter when mother decided she wanted to dance around the kitchen.
Manhattan was home, for her, the young Olivia and about a million up and comers, kids with trust funds, old money, new money and everyone else with more than a little to spare. A ten year old girl who had to learn the subway system, which bus went uptown, which went down, with the whole world thriving around her.
And so when she got enough of her own cash and was done floating from apartment to apartment, boyfriend to boyfriend it was Brooklyn. Brooklyn it had been since she was twenty-one and Brooklyn forever it would be.
On her way to the D she passes two or three pawn shops and every day, without fail, there's a shiny new guitar in the window. Detritus from the thousand or so young adults filtering in and out of the city every day, doing that make-or-break thing, most of them breaking. Most of them selling their instrument, their muse so they can fund the one-seventy back to Omaha.
One way.
It's always half-way to the Bridge when it hits her that maybe she should learn to play the guitar because it's easy and she needs a past time and when she's alone with herself it's just too quiet. Olivia needs to begin making noise again. There's been this lull, this rise and repeat that she's managed to fall into and there's not a bit of her that thinks that's okay. But what if it's hard? And what if she fails? And what if she's honestly not the person she's always known herself to be?
Sometimes Olivia likes to imagine she's going to take a trip out to JFK, point at the big board and buy a one way. Because she'll never be gone from here, ever. And even if she leaves, she'll never really have left anything behind.
-
Olivia stays; she never works, never progresses, just stays and it's a sort of evolving stasis she doesn't understand; he seems to fall into a rewind that he can’t snap out of, and it’s worse each shift.
It really is harder than it should be, always is, and she thinks yeah, it always will be.
Because the coffee and cruller he places on her desk are with a heavy hand and it's out of her before she can feign stopping it. "What Elliot, what?" And his jaw is clenched and so is hers and she thinks, yeah, this is how it's going to be from now on.
The two of them skirting around the chasm that's developed between them.
She saw it coming, and then she didn't; she doesn't think now, that she did, almost wishes she had, but if everything happens for a reason then there's some driving force behind all of this distance. The majority of all of this stems from him, but she's not blameless, really and she needs to stop pretending to be.
It's a not-so-autumn day and she's got her sleeves rolled up tightly to her elbows, ready to dig down and in. Down and away.
And it's hands on hips and staring him down as the rest of the bullpen flutters around them, accustomed to the Benson-Stabler by now, and even if not, everyone's heard tell.
Everything that has a beginning has to have an end and so one of them has to give; his shoulders are too broad and so he thinks it's his burden to carry all of the weight. Time for her to break, it's time. Her hands fit so seamlessly to her hips that it's no longer the stance of Olivia-who-is-agitated but just Olivia and she suggests in a loosening tone, "Let's take these across the street."
His head lifts and she grabs her breakfast and walks towards the door; he follows. It's all a wonder, why he's so angry and why she puts up with it and why they never bother talking about what they hate about what's going on.
Small steps, it's always helpful to remind herself... small steps.
-
It's her life that happens in these moments; each can be taken as separate instances to be assessed as such and some days, Olivia chooses the big picture over all of the small battles. So much easier that way, she comes to figure. The old adage about not getting any younger sneaks up on her at least once a day and thank goodness for small blessings and all of that.
Elliot brings her morning coffee and for some reason, the catching and releasing of that moment weeks before has made it that much easier to remember why they work so well together in the first place. Kathy still calls him, he sleeps through the night now and he's eating right-as right as Elliot Stabler can reasonably be asked to eat-and she knows all of this because he has told her. He's told her all of this between laughs and smiles and actual conversation.
They share again and there's a cavernous clenching in her chest as her soul seeks to remember that this is how they were before and this is how she wants to keep them forever. How selfish but there are some times when it's okay to accept that being selfish is acceptable and this is one of them.
His laugh is infectious and she's missed it more than she can actually manage to think about. They used to be friends and now they are again. They're friends, they're more but it's alright, just to be friends. That's more than fine, it really, really is.
The more she thinks about it, really, she comes to find that even if she tried to leave him, she'll never have really left at all.
Because she's part of that smile and has been for years.
It's good that they're friends; it really is. Back to the way things should be, really.
-
It's not Elliot's anger that causes it all to combust, it's her need for something to fill the gap between 35 and 40. She has nothing and it's in the quite-literal sense. There's a job and a man who isn't hers and a few friends and that's the be all and end all of who Olivia Benson is. She grocery shops and returns her Netflix and manages to find her way to yoga three times a week and she just is and it's beginning to kill her.
There's a hill, and she's about to leap right straight over it and she's researched no way to cope with what she hasn't got.
Who copes, anyway? There's enough in her savings for a shiny new sports car, but she's not a man, and when would she drive it?
Olivia feels transient in the most odd of ways, and no, she can't put her finger on it, anywhere near it.
There comes a time in life when it's alright to admit things to oneself and she realizes these things: when her mother was forty years old, she herself was fifteen; everyone she was friends with in high school was either married or divorced or dead; she's been in love three times and one time just happens to be currently.
It's funny, how things work out like that, from time to time. Funny how she's managed to regress because there is a particular song that reminds her of him, and a beer and everything else. It's a constant, how much she's reminded of the fact that she wants her partner. In every damned way possible. It's beyond wondering if it's because they're together every day and beyond the basic fact that he's attractive beyond what's reasonably normal. It has nothing to do with him being the one to save her once and again, it's none of that.
It's because, well, he's Elliot. And there's no one else that she'd stay with.
A night when she'd taken the subway in and he's got the sedan for the night. Whatever Elliot has been, he's always been sure to see to it that she's safe, and so he gives her a lift back to Brooklyn and they listen to David Allen Boucher and discuss how he's perfect for bedtime radio. What else is there to say? She avoids his eyes and he does his best not to notice and it's almost normal.
He asks her, "Did they do bedtime radio with him in Oregon?" and it's a simple question and there's no animosity in it, just perhaps some regret and it triggers something in her. They're outside of her building and the moment is too ripe, so real that she can imagine his arm sliding along the back of her seat.
It's too much.
And that's what throws it all to hell, with the, "Fuck, can I ever leave you?!"
-
She'd said it, and slammed the door and stormed up to her apartment like it was a final thing that they both knew it wasn't, like she was thirty years her junior. How. Fucking. Melodramatic. But buttons had been pushed and she'd responded like a powder keg. Olivia grips her head in her hands because it's entirely too appropriate; she's finally trapped. Really and truly.
Her back against the door and now, now she knows: it's all going to change. It's all going to change because she had to be the one to speak up. Because he won't let that go, she knows he won't.
She knows him and he knows her and they both know what that means.
And so when his knock comes, strong and solid, she prepares to meet a vicious gaze when she swings the door open.
But there's no time.
And time stops.
But there's none of it left, timeless.
Elliot's hands are on her face and he has her back against the breakfast bar, his leg kicking at the door behind him. It hits her now that she never bought that guitar, never learned how to play, but the words he is speaking to her will make up for all of the silence in her life. And the scent-what he does to her senses-of him, what she's been smelling for the past how many years, and it is all over her.
'How long?' she wants to ask, but knows his answer will mirror hers and that would be too much, so she just allows Elliot’s tongue to press against hers and let’s him push her jacket from her shoulders.
There are markings all over her pillows from where she's dropped the pen doing the Sunday crossword in bed. Dirty clothes are strewn about and her bedside table doesn't function but that doesn't particularly matter when he walks her back until her knees hit the edges of the bed and she falls.
There was always an inherent knowledge that someday this would happen, whether she really admitted it or not. And at least she knew herself, because for years, this was how it was going to be. Post-argument, too raw, too real. What surprises her, what totally knocks the wind from her lungs is how fast they move together, how quickly his hands move from her hips to her breasts, seek underneath her clothing.
When he presses into her, their gazes are locked; she can't think.
"Do. Not. Even. Breathe," he whispers and it's hot against her eye lids. What else is there to do but suffocate beneath him as he pleads again, "God, don't breathe."
But she takes a breath for the first time in what feels like forever and clutches his back so tightly she's sure her fingers will leave marks.
comments (always welcome)
criticism (equally welcome, as long as it's constructive)