It's good stuff. I promise.
lowriseflare informed me of a new Aaron Sorkin pilot for HBO called More As the Story Develops. How hadn't I heard of this!? It's going to be brilliant, for sure, probably a little more Studio 60 than anything.
White Collar is back on Tuesday! Check out that first scene at the website. So charged! Guh! All I want them to do it make out all over one another's stupid faces.
Also, someone managed to get me to watch The Good Wife and I'm really, really enjoying it. Not like I need another show. But since we're talking about other shows I've begun watching, Cougartown is pretty great. (I want Courtney Cox's arms.)
Hey, and if you like Ben/Leslie, go and read While You're Busy Making Other Plans by swayinisdancin. It's good stuff. Promise.
Contingency, r
Elliot/Olivia
Spoilers: If you haven't heard the news about what next season has in store (or doesn't, more like it) don't read.
Thanks, Dennis, for the read through.
"His desk isn’t cleared, not for a week and three days."
It’s a Tuesday, brilliant and bright and perfect. A breeze off the Hudson, New York smelling new. And a bullet in her gut, metaphorical, but that’s as near as she’ll ever be able to place it.
There’s that rushing around her, everyone doing their job but she’s stock still and in shock. There’s been a stasis for awhile, where she hasn’t aged and neither has he, because it’s been days and months and years of the same thing.
Almost perfect if it weren’t for the fact that it was all so devastating.
It feels like a singular instant that they’ve been together. Olivia recalls in a stunning second his birthday, his children's, their first day, the date of his HIV test, when Colleen was arrested, when Eli was born and she’s defining herself in terms of him, twelve years later. And not a fucking phone call.
So she calls him. Olivia Benson, has never, ever in her life been a coward.
“I just couldn’t,” he begins, after the bomb is dropped. His voice is fuzzy over the wires from Queens to Manhattan and she shatters audibly. A sob, something breaking. It’s too much. Olivia says nothing and places the phone back in the carriage with deliberate sensitivity.
He won’t hear her falling apart.
He’s never really picked her up when she has, but this time, he won’t be privy at the very least.
His desk isn’t cleared, not for a week and three days.
---
Complacency, it’s strange, almost normal. No one treats her differently because they know she’s stronger than this. They know she’ll fuck them up if they say word one, so word one is never said. Olivia is glad for it.
...she’s not so sure she is.
There are coffees from John, bourbons from Fin and an actual shoulder pat from Cragen but it’s not going to change anything. Twelve years, like dust, blown in the breeze.
As though it’s nothing.
Because she doesn’t hear about it, and no one tells her. It’s his eyes, as Jenna’s life drains in his arms. A death and another. They know she knows.
Olivia does nothing.
Stoicism.
It ruins her.
---
There’s a predictably about Elliot Stabler. It would be comforting, if she weren’t so set on being completely consumed with the crumbling of her professional life. And more, yes. More, more than that.
A Catholic, tragic and tortured, to a tee. Making the rounds, making amends. He’s got years and years to account for with her; she knows he won’t arrive in the night, it won’t allow for enough penance.
She wants to ask him who else is on the list. When he’ll run scared, upstate. Or somewhere else equally as safe and secure.
It’s a Tuesday, too, when he arrives at her apartment building; she’s on the steps, and there’s no pressure to invite him up. There’s the stoop and the two of them and summer. Late sun yawning, attempting to set but still shedding orange down on the Fulton triangle.
She’s the first to speak, he’ll never be, not like this. “So, apologies, explanations, all are expected, not necessarily expected.”
“Liv, you know...”
She does know, she knows it all, because she admitted it to herself eons ago. About herself. About him. About them. She’s never been a coward, but the proper words don’t come, now. “But I don’t, and you know... fuck you, because you’re supposed to tell me this.”
They’re still partners, until One P. P. files all of that paperwork. Cabinets of it, as far as the two of them are concerned.
His palms are scarlet in the sunset and he can’t meet her eyes. “How could I?”
“Don’t you get it?” And he does, doesn’t want to pretend like he doesn’t, because it’s all so perfectly expected from him. Twelve going on thirteen and she’s the only one to feel any of this.
Apropos.
He sits on her stoop, miles and miles away from Queens until she shuts off her living room light.
This is the end.
---
Olivia won’t admit, won’t admit that she’s held back from so many things because of the possibility. It ices her, to her core, acknowledging how many life decisions he’s factored into without even knowing.
It’s mortifying, stunning how heavily she’s relied on all of him for years now. Even as Elliot acknowledged that yes, he was the only person in her life, he didn’t understand.
Or maybe he did and the guilt., the guilt, that fucking crushing guilt...
There’s a shot of expensive whiskey in a tumbler and she shakes it down, one’s enough, just to take that edge off. She’s forty-something, and night like this should have left her years ago, but here she is, brooding.
Over something that never was.
Never was a shadow of being.
How. Fucking. Silly.
---
“I can’t remember if I ever told you to fuck off,” she says to him, over breakfast at the diner on 52nd. “I kind of wish I had said that, when it counted.” Olivia has a full plate of French toast and hasn’t touched it.
Elliot’s been digging around scrambled eggs for about three minutes without eating anything. And these are good eggs. Clinks and clangs from cups, mugs, plates, other patrons and the whole world is just going right on around them and Olivia hates it.
She wants a moment. One, a single real moment, right now. If ever.
“You didn’t,” Elliot claims, gaze focused on the same soggy hashbrowns they’ve eaten for, for... for, well, ever. There isn’t anything he’s going to discover about them now. “I would have remembered.”
Olivia takes down the rest of her third cup of coffee. They’ve been here for an hour. “Are you fucking kiddin-”
“June 5th, two-thousand and three, on the corner of fourth and Lex and you had a fucking hot dog in your hand even though you were on this no sodium kick and who the fuck asks for a second packet of ketchup.”
That shuts her up.
He shovels a mouthful of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“You fucking debutante, shut up and eat your toast.”
Olivia pays the bill, leaves when he’s in the bathroom.
---
It’s a cookout at their home, a formal, paper invitation from Kathy. Nothing expensive, just standard cardstock, but it has her full name emblazoned in what she knows is Dickie’s forced handwriting. This is how much she knows about his children.
It’s on her bulletin board.
Until the tack releases in the humidity and it falls behind her trash can.
And she forgets about it.
Maybe she wants to.
(She does.)
---
Paper pushing is never what she’s wanted, but it’s easy. And it’s something. So when she’s promoted and promoted again, something inside of her cracks. Olivia Benson concedes a little, she gives up just a little ground.
And then there’s a mahogany desk, and an expensive ball pen and her name-when she signs it-means something in New York. It should be enough, because what else is there, honestly? Really?
His name comes across her desk for a long overdue award.
Olivia pretends to lose the paper.
She brings it home and burns it.
Wouldn’t want to destroy the newly-minted reputation.
---
Elliot runs into her, literally, in Poughkeepsie, he’s out for an early morning jog and she’s called in as an expert and they stop. They’re universes away, as far as the tri-state area is concerned. But they freeze and stop when it happens, like a VHS on pause.
Grainy and stuttering.
And it all halts.
“You look good,” he says with labored breath.
“You look better,” she concedes, gives him her new card, with her current cell number on it. She doesn’t speculate on how many times he tried to contact her after she discontinued her old one.
He could have found her.
The NYPD really isn’t that expansive.
---
She never admits.
Neither does he.
Things change. Things have changed.
He comes inside of her.
It’s like the one-six all over again.
They’re needing each other, but with a twist now.
White Collar is back on Tuesday! Check out that first scene at the website. So charged! Guh! All I want them to do it make out all over one another's stupid faces.
Also, someone managed to get me to watch The Good Wife and I'm really, really enjoying it. Not like I need another show. But since we're talking about other shows I've begun watching, Cougartown is pretty great. (I want Courtney Cox's arms.)
Hey, and if you like Ben/Leslie, go and read While You're Busy Making Other Plans by swayinisdancin. It's good stuff. Promise.
Contingency, r
Elliot/Olivia
Spoilers: If you haven't heard the news about what next season has in store (or doesn't, more like it) don't read.
Thanks, Dennis, for the read through.
"His desk isn’t cleared, not for a week and three days."
It’s a Tuesday, brilliant and bright and perfect. A breeze off the Hudson, New York smelling new. And a bullet in her gut, metaphorical, but that’s as near as she’ll ever be able to place it.
There’s that rushing around her, everyone doing their job but she’s stock still and in shock. There’s been a stasis for awhile, where she hasn’t aged and neither has he, because it’s been days and months and years of the same thing.
Almost perfect if it weren’t for the fact that it was all so devastating.
It feels like a singular instant that they’ve been together. Olivia recalls in a stunning second his birthday, his children's, their first day, the date of his HIV test, when Colleen was arrested, when Eli was born and she’s defining herself in terms of him, twelve years later. And not a fucking phone call.
So she calls him. Olivia Benson, has never, ever in her life been a coward.
“I just couldn’t,” he begins, after the bomb is dropped. His voice is fuzzy over the wires from Queens to Manhattan and she shatters audibly. A sob, something breaking. It’s too much. Olivia says nothing and places the phone back in the carriage with deliberate sensitivity.
He won’t hear her falling apart.
He’s never really picked her up when she has, but this time, he won’t be privy at the very least.
His desk isn’t cleared, not for a week and three days.
---
Complacency, it’s strange, almost normal. No one treats her differently because they know she’s stronger than this. They know she’ll fuck them up if they say word one, so word one is never said. Olivia is glad for it.
...she’s not so sure she is.
There are coffees from John, bourbons from Fin and an actual shoulder pat from Cragen but it’s not going to change anything. Twelve years, like dust, blown in the breeze.
As though it’s nothing.
Because she doesn’t hear about it, and no one tells her. It’s his eyes, as Jenna’s life drains in his arms. A death and another. They know she knows.
Olivia does nothing.
Stoicism.
It ruins her.
---
There’s a predictably about Elliot Stabler. It would be comforting, if she weren’t so set on being completely consumed with the crumbling of her professional life. And more, yes. More, more than that.
A Catholic, tragic and tortured, to a tee. Making the rounds, making amends. He’s got years and years to account for with her; she knows he won’t arrive in the night, it won’t allow for enough penance.
She wants to ask him who else is on the list. When he’ll run scared, upstate. Or somewhere else equally as safe and secure.
It’s a Tuesday, too, when he arrives at her apartment building; she’s on the steps, and there’s no pressure to invite him up. There’s the stoop and the two of them and summer. Late sun yawning, attempting to set but still shedding orange down on the Fulton triangle.
She’s the first to speak, he’ll never be, not like this. “So, apologies, explanations, all are expected, not necessarily expected.”
“Liv, you know...”
She does know, she knows it all, because she admitted it to herself eons ago. About herself. About him. About them. She’s never been a coward, but the proper words don’t come, now. “But I don’t, and you know... fuck you, because you’re supposed to tell me this.”
They’re still partners, until One P. P. files all of that paperwork. Cabinets of it, as far as the two of them are concerned.
His palms are scarlet in the sunset and he can’t meet her eyes. “How could I?”
“Don’t you get it?” And he does, doesn’t want to pretend like he doesn’t, because it’s all so perfectly expected from him. Twelve going on thirteen and she’s the only one to feel any of this.
Apropos.
He sits on her stoop, miles and miles away from Queens until she shuts off her living room light.
This is the end.
---
Olivia won’t admit, won’t admit that she’s held back from so many things because of the possibility. It ices her, to her core, acknowledging how many life decisions he’s factored into without even knowing.
It’s mortifying, stunning how heavily she’s relied on all of him for years now. Even as Elliot acknowledged that yes, he was the only person in her life, he didn’t understand.
Or maybe he did and the guilt., the guilt, that fucking crushing guilt...
There’s a shot of expensive whiskey in a tumbler and she shakes it down, one’s enough, just to take that edge off. She’s forty-something, and night like this should have left her years ago, but here she is, brooding.
Over something that never was.
Never was a shadow of being.
How. Fucking. Silly.
---
“I can’t remember if I ever told you to fuck off,” she says to him, over breakfast at the diner on 52nd. “I kind of wish I had said that, when it counted.” Olivia has a full plate of French toast and hasn’t touched it.
Elliot’s been digging around scrambled eggs for about three minutes without eating anything. And these are good eggs. Clinks and clangs from cups, mugs, plates, other patrons and the whole world is just going right on around them and Olivia hates it.
She wants a moment. One, a single real moment, right now. If ever.
“You didn’t,” Elliot claims, gaze focused on the same soggy hashbrowns they’ve eaten for, for... for, well, ever. There isn’t anything he’s going to discover about them now. “I would have remembered.”
Olivia takes down the rest of her third cup of coffee. They’ve been here for an hour. “Are you fucking kiddin-”
“June 5th, two-thousand and three, on the corner of fourth and Lex and you had a fucking hot dog in your hand even though you were on this no sodium kick and who the fuck asks for a second packet of ketchup.”
That shuts her up.
He shovels a mouthful of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
“You fucking debutante, shut up and eat your toast.”
Olivia pays the bill, leaves when he’s in the bathroom.
---
It’s a cookout at their home, a formal, paper invitation from Kathy. Nothing expensive, just standard cardstock, but it has her full name emblazoned in what she knows is Dickie’s forced handwriting. This is how much she knows about his children.
It’s on her bulletin board.
Until the tack releases in the humidity and it falls behind her trash can.
And she forgets about it.
Maybe she wants to.
(She does.)
---
Paper pushing is never what she’s wanted, but it’s easy. And it’s something. So when she’s promoted and promoted again, something inside of her cracks. Olivia Benson concedes a little, she gives up just a little ground.
And then there’s a mahogany desk, and an expensive ball pen and her name-when she signs it-means something in New York. It should be enough, because what else is there, honestly? Really?
His name comes across her desk for a long overdue award.
Olivia pretends to lose the paper.
She brings it home and burns it.
Wouldn’t want to destroy the newly-minted reputation.
---
Elliot runs into her, literally, in Poughkeepsie, he’s out for an early morning jog and she’s called in as an expert and they stop. They’re universes away, as far as the tri-state area is concerned. But they freeze and stop when it happens, like a VHS on pause.
Grainy and stuttering.
And it all halts.
“You look good,” he says with labored breath.
“You look better,” she concedes, gives him her new card, with her current cell number on it. She doesn’t speculate on how many times he tried to contact her after she discontinued her old one.
He could have found her.
The NYPD really isn’t that expansive.
---
She never admits.
Neither does he.
Things change. Things have changed.
He comes inside of her.
It’s like the one-six all over again.
They’re needing each other, but with a twist now.