Fic: no fear of thunder, SVU, (Elliot/Olivia) PG13

Feb 25, 2009 20:37

So, I was writing SVU apocafic for dayofindulgence, but I didn't like how it was unrolling, frankly. So this isn't all that self-indulgent but it is a very clear scene I had in my head for El and Liv that I wanted to get down before it escaped. Let's face it, my really indulgent El/Liv is probably going to take a little courage and a little thought before I can really get THAT down.

So.

no fear of thunder
elliot/olivia, pg13 for language, spoilers for Fault through Choreographed, angst AND humor! IKR? I didn't write something so soaked in angst that it needs a suicide watch.

a/n: If Olivia came back from Oregon and didn't go back to being Elliot's partner. He's not handling it well.



[]

She likes Oregon more than she thought she would, being a city girl and all. She likes Porter more than she thought she would too, but it’s all about timing and she’s never had good luck with that. Ever.

As evidenced by the way she breezes back into the one-six on her second day back in New York and finds Dani Beck in her seat, Elliot’s hand on her shoulder, and her own heart stuffed up into her throat in a rough bid at a desperate escape.

Ouch.

She goes away that day, again, because it’s something she hadn’t expected and she needs time to sort it out. She and Elliot have never been anything less than complicated, and she’d needed to run across the country because moving one department away hadn’t been enough to escape his brooding and his hold.

She was all he had left, so that means she deserves to be punished? Stuck up on a shelf, never touched, staying pure while he finds comfort with someone else?

Yeah, fuck that.

[]

She goes back after a week, because it’s her home and she and Elliot might have blown it, but she’s not giving up the house, damn it.

Don hems and haws until she tells him she doesn’t want back in with Elliot. She wants back into computer crimes. Lot of pedophiles out there online.

Plus, the coffee is better.

[]

She’s not hiding it exactly, but she doesn’t go into SVU and announce that she’s back either. She settles into the job, and she figures she’ll know when Don tells Elliot she’s back, because she’ll hear him thundering down the hall long before he appears in front of her.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t thunder, and he doesn’t yell. She just looks up one day when she’s working late and he’s standing there in the doorway.

He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and the neckline is all worn out and ragged and it dips down a bit so she can see the end of his clavicle and the corded muscle of his neck, and his blue eyes are so much more painful than she remembers.

The sight of him makes her feel like she’s been kicked in the stomach.

“Hey,” she says. She tries to extend an olive branch. He still feels like her partner.

He stares at her for a moment. “What are you doing, Olivia?”

She thinks about a sarcastic reply, but it doesn’t seem like the right time. “You have a new partner,” she says.

He swallows and stares and all that emotional baggage they share is just piling up between them, and finally she just breaks a little. “Well, for God’s sake, Elliot, I was only on loan to the feds. I wasn’t going to be gone forever!”

His expression tightens. “Seven years, Olivia,” he says, and his voice is low and restrained, his eyes hooded, and she can feel the confusion and the anger rolling off of him and it just makes her feel tired and mad and frustrated.

“Yeah,” she says. “And in seven years we couldn’t do what you and your new partner did in three weeks.”

He looks startled, and she takes that for confirmation. The gossip machine may be ugly, but it’s amazingly accurate.

His expression changes, and he looks hurt suddenly. “Screw you,” he says, quietly.

And she wants to say ‘Nope, not me. Isn’t that Dani’s job?’ but that feels like jealousy and pettiness, and she doesn’t even know Dani, and even if she did it isn’t Dani’s fault. This is Elliot’s thing.

And hers.

When she doesn’t reply, he leaves silently, and that kicked feeling gets a little stronger.

[]

“Your partner is a real prick,” Ted says to her one day. They’re working late in the chat rooms, and she’s known Ted for a while and likes him.

“He’s not my partner anymore,” she says, not asking who he means.

“Yeah, well, I don’t think anyone else wants him.”

She turns then. “What did he do?”

Ted glances at her. “If looks could kill I’d be six feet under by now.”

She snorts and turns back to her screen. “Don’t let him scare you.”

“He thinks you’re wasted in here. He’s not over you.”

She sighs. “Stop with the fucking relationship metaphors, Ted. Christ.”

“We got in an argument at a scene.”

She turns again. “Why?”

He shrugs. “I don’t even fucking know. He was all up my ass the entire time I was there. I told him it was no wonder you got out when you did, and he about took my head off.”

She shoots him an accusing glance. “Ted, you know damn well you don’t talk about someone’s ex-partner like that.”

He shrugs. “Guy’s a loose cannon. I’m just saying.”

She thinks about all the stories she’s heard, about how spectacularly Elliot struggled when she was first gone. “Leave him alone.”

It’s silent for a moment as they both tap at their keyboards. And then she hears Ted mutter, “Jesus, Liv, what did you do, break his heart?”

If I did, she thinks. It was only because he broke mine first.

[]

The department casts a wide net and comes up with a boatful of pedophilic fish. She has to go upstate with three other cops to find the ringleader, and it takes days and it’s dangerous and there’s lots of money involved. She’s gone for a week and fires her gun three times. She and Ted get drunk on the last night they’re there, after the arrests, because it was just that shitty. She and Ted do not sleep together, because he’s married and she’s already fucked and that’s not what they do.

She’s starting to realize in a roundabout way that a lack of boundaries was never her problem, it was only she and Elliot together that created that problem. Huh.

On her first day back, she’s walking some files up to SVU and she walks in on an argument between Dani and Elliot that doesn’t look pretty. Dani takes one look at her and throws up her hands.

“Finally!” Dani exclaims, and then she snarls at Elliot, “She’s back, see? Now you can start acting like a human being again!” And then she walks past Olivia and stalks off down the hall.

Olivia watches her go and then looks at Elliot. He looks away.

“She’s feisty,” Olivia says, trying for a note of approval.

He glances at her and shrugs. “She’s got nothing on you, Liv.” And she can see all the battles they used to have, still are having apparently, where the whole department knew they were pissed off.

Olivia gives her own shrug. “Yeah, well, who does?”

She’s surprised to find her tone teasing. Elliot’s mouth tugs upward at the corners. “She calls you my ‘precious Olivia’.”

Does she now? How interesting. Olivia smirks. “Not bad. I kind of like it.”

He does smile now. “I thought you might.”

She walks by him with the files and uses them to thump him gently on the head. “She just needs to learn how to handle you.”

“God, don’t teach her anything,” he says, ducking away from her. “I couldn’t take another one of you.”

“Or another Gitano,” she says without thinking.

He goes silent, and so does she.

She lays the files carefully on Fin’s desk and then turns quietly. Elliot is sitting heavily in his chair staring at her. “What the hell happened?” he asks, softly.

All she can do is shake her head, helplessly. And then Cragen’s voice is loud in the hall and she’s walking out again.

[]

She hears through the grapevine when Dani transfers out. John, who likes to bring her Diet Coke and then hang around telling her all the weird stuff he finds online at night, tells her Dani couldn’t handle the victims, and Liv isn’t that surprised. Although, she wonders how much of it was really the victims and how much was really Elliot.

Don comes down and asks if she wants her old job back, and she suddenly isn’t sure.

“Let me think about it,” she says. And Don looks surprised but he nods and lets her be.

And she does think about it, because it’s Elliot and there will never not be a link between them that doesn’t pull at her. But when she thinks about how close they get, how heavy the weight he bears is, how thoroughly he overwhelms her… she hesitates.

[]

They’re at a retirement party for one of the guys in Vice when it comes to a rather nasty head. She’s talking to Ted, and they’re leaning on the bar drinking their bourbon straight up. He’s one of those guys who smiles a lot and worries if you don’t wear your vest, and he flirts but he’s not a prick about it. And she’s laughing, because he’s telling her how they dressed one of the male rookies up in a wig and a skirt to set a trap and he had to shave his legs, and it’s just fucking funny.

And then Elliot is there, his hand on her elbow, his voice low and he’s saying, “Liv, can I talk to you a minute?”

And before she can answer, Ted, with his third bourbon comfortably put away, throws out a joke about the Sex Police. Elliot’s jaw tightens but he ignores Ted and looks at her, and she knows what it’s about, of course, but she hesitates.

Ted throws out, in his best bullshit voice, “You want a booty call after the divorce, Stabler?” And he’s joking, but he can’t see Elliot’s face and she can, and she thinks Oh, shit, just before Elliot turns around.

“Hey, fuck you,” Elliot growls. “This doesn’t involve you.”

“Elliot, knock it off,” she throws out, ready to pull her coat on and leave them all behind.

But then Ted calls him a ‘fucking psychopath’ and although later she’ll wonder at the strategy behind it all, she can’t do much else except react when Elliot jumps on him and knocks him to the floor, scattering drunk cops like bowling pins. It’s a hard, violent tussle, and she can’t even get close to the flying fists to try and grab Elliot, and she probably couldn’t drag him off anyway.

They were both beat cops back in the day and Ted has about four inches and forty pounds on Elliot, but Elliot has the rage and he’s growling something that she can’t understand and he’s lifting his fist, once, twice, three times, and she can hear the meaty thumps as the blows land. But then the other cops have him and drag him off and Ted comes up off the floor with blood on his face and anger in his eyes, but the other cops grab him and he only glares at Elliot and doesn’t go for him.

Which is just as well, because Cragen appears in the middle and looks at all of them as if they’ve all sprouted a third eye, and demands, “Elliot, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Elliot has blood on his face and he’s trying to shake off the hands that hold him, and he stops when Cragen gets in his face.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Cragen asks harshly.

“Captain, I…” he stammers, and Cragen glares and glances at Ted.

Ted holds his hands up and points at Elliot, and Cragen just shakes his head. “That’s it. Both of you, get the hell out of here.” He puts a finger in Elliot’s face. “You be in my office at 8 a.m. sharp tomorrow, got it? You’re two seconds late and your ass is fired.”

Elliot just nods his assent and starts for the door, and she exhales in frustration, and then Don turns on her. “Olivia, what the hell just happened here?”

She’s startled but recovers and says immediately, “Nothing, Captain. Too many drinks, too many bad days. You know.”

He glares at her, and she can see he doesn’t buy it and there’s been too much shit going on with them to fake it any longer. “There anything I should know about you two?” He’s pissed, and she’s surprised it took him this long, but his anger makes her angry, and she bristles under his suspicion.

“No,” she answers vehemently, but then she adds, “And even if there was, we’re not partners anymore so it’s none of your business.”

His whole expression changes, and she realizes she’s just stuck her foot in it big time. He leans in close and says, “You know what, Benson? When my detectives are beating on each other in bars and almost coming to blows at a crime scene? It certainly is my business.” He looks at the door where Elliot disappeared and then back at her. “Not partners anymore? You could have fooled me. You’re still defending him like you two are joined at the hip.”

She stays wisely silent this time, and he holds her gaze fiercely for a long moment before walking away. She exhales in relief.

[]

The bar is in an older hotel down the street from the precinct. It still has gold velvet wallpaper for Christ’s sake, and she keeps expecting to see women in lingerie with beehive hairdos. Some of the older cops love this shit, but she just feels out of place.

When she walks out of the bar and into the hotel foyer, Elliot is sitting there on the edge of a big built-in planter. He’s holding a white handkerchief to his nose and she can see the red blotches of blood in the fabric. He’s leaning down over his knees and staring at the floor, and the rest of the cops have abandoned him to go back in and drink. He has friends, but they get as tired of him as anyone else.

She feels a quick rush of anger that instantly smoothes out and fades. Seven years has taught her a lot about this man and his temper. It’s taught her a lot about him, period. She still feels connected to him, and that’s no surprise, but she still worries about him and likes him, despite it all. She still feels more comfortable fighting with him than she does getting along with anyone else.

Yeah, she’s so fucked it isn’t even funny.

He rubs wearily at his forehead and his shoulders rise with the long, slow, deep breath he takes, and her heart aches a little. She walks slowly toward him.

“You’re an ass,” she says, quietly.

He glances up at her and then down again, sighing. He presses fingers gingerly against his bruised eye. “Thanks.”

She lowers herself down beside him and relaxes forward, elbows on knees. She sighs. “It was my decision not to come back, Elliot. Not Ted’s.”

He stares at the handkerchief in his hands and smoothes his thumb over it. After a long moment he says, quietly, “You don’t belong there, Liv.”

She swallows and looks at his profile as he tries very hard not to look at her. “I’m not quite sure where I belong right now, to be honest,” she says.

His brow furrows, and he says nothing, but his thumb runs over and over the fabric of his handkerchief.

She tugs his sleeve and stands. “Come on.”

He frowns and glances up. “What?”

“Come on. I’m still at my old place. It’s just a few blocks. I’ll get you some ice.”

“You’re helping me?” He looks a little doubtful.

“Well, who else is going to do it? You’ve chased off everyone else who cares about you.” She starts to walk.

He falls in beside her. “You care about me?”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be an idiot.”

He slides her a faint smile.

[]

She puts some ice into a kitchen towel while he digs through her cupboards and pours himself a glass of her Scotch. She never drinks it. It’s actually still around from the last time he was over and the case had been bad enough to warrant drinking. Before everything had gone to shit and she’d run as far as land would allow.

“It’s like you never left,” he says, putting the bottle away and glancing around the kitchen. He sounds irritated.

“You wanna punch a few holes in the walls to change it up a bit?” she asks mordantly.

He slides her a warning glare.

He sits on her sofa and sips the Scotch, and she hands the makeshift ice pack to him and sits on the arm of her lounger and watches as he presses it against his reddened eye. He looks at her.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“I’m mad at you!” he answers vehemently, as if she should have known.

And she had known, of course, it’s just that she hadn’t quite known where to start. Maybe they have to start here, with the way they are now, and work backwards.

His willingness to confess his anger is actually a good sign.

“Then why are you hurting everyone else? If I’m the one you’re angry with then aim your blows at me,” she says, sharply.

He holds her gaze for a long moment and then sets his Scotch down and falls back against the sofa. “I can’t,” he says.

“Why?”

He hesitates and shakes his head slightly and then he says, “Because I don’t want you to leave again.”

Her stomach does a slow flip-flop at his admission. She tries to push it away. “Are you kidding?” She tries to laugh. “We’ve done nothing but bicker and glare at each other since I came back.”

He doesn’t laugh. Or smile. He takes the ice pack off his eye and looks at her with a piercing gaze. “What do you think, Olivia? That all that shit that came out in that warehouse with Gitano just disappeared when you left?”

Now it’s her turn to grow sober and remain speechless. No, she hadn’t thought that, but…

“What else was I supposed to do?” she finally asks. “You were clear on what you didn’t want to happen, and I… needed some time to process that.”

“You could have told me!”

Yeah, she could have done that. “You’re right,” she agrees. “And I should have. But Jesus Christ, Elliot, what did you expect me to do? You basically told me the next time it was my life on the line you weren’t going to choose me. You told me that if your life was on the line, I wasn’t allowed to choose you. You told me I was all you had left but it was never going to happen between us.”

“I didn’t say ‘never’,” he protests.

“What does it matter? After all that shit we went through, of course I needed some distance. You’re so goddamned… intense, and overpowering. And frankly, I didn’t like that pedestal you put me on.” She takes a breath, calms her voice. “So I jumped off.”

He stares at her for a moment, and she can see him taking it all in, and then he looks down at the ice-pack, shifting it with his hands. “Shit,” he says, softly.

She agrees. After a moment of silence, she moves from the chair and sits beside him on the sofa.

“I heard about Dani. Sorry.”

He shrugs. “If she wasn’t meant, she wasn’t meant. It’s for the best.”

It’s true. The last thing you want is someone who can’t handle the victims working SVU. He understands that even better than she does.

“You’ll still see her?”

He shakes his head. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Oh.”

He glances at her. “It isn’t what you think it is, Olivia.”

She holds her hands up in surrender. “I just… that whole year before Gitano, things were so… heavy between us, and Kathy was gone, and nothing happened. And in three weeks with Dani, you…” she trails off, because she isn’t sure what really happened, and it’s still kind of painful anyway.

“I didn’t have seven years of history with Dani,” he says, glancing at her. “I didn’t have anything to lose. There was no risk.”

She nods silently.

He sighs. “I didn’t sleep with her, Olivia, okay? I would have, but someone kept coming between us.”

She slides him a vexed look.

“You,” he says, with a touch of that earlier vehemence that says he’s finding her very trying right now.

“Oh,” she says. She looks at him. “Oh, yes. Your ‘precious Olivia’.”

He doesn’t return her look, but he smiles. “Yeah.”

She watches him for a while and then she nudges him with her shoulder, smirking. “Jesus, Stabler, I’m not even in the same state as you and I’m still cock-blocking you.”

He laughs.

She smiles at his laughter, and he turns to meet her gaze. “I know it was complicated, Liv, but fuck, give me a little heads-up the next time you want to leave, okay? You’ve got too much…” He shakes his head. “Too much power. You know?”

”Over me” is what he leaves out, but she knows. “I’m sorry,” she says.

He slants a smile at her. “Me too.”

She sighs then, and the silence settles down over them, and she can smell the hint of his soap, and the smoke from the bar, and that familiar Elliot-scent that used to strike her at the oddest times in Oregon.

“So,” he says, using that soft tone he has. “We partners again?”

She winces. “Actually, I don’t know, El. I mean, I said some things to Don that might not have really predisposed him to put us back together. And I’m not sure I want to come back.”

He looks hurt. “Liv…”

“I don’t want to go back to the way we were. I don’t think we can.”

“What the hell was this whole thing about then?” He looks frustrated with her and wounded.

She looks at him for a moment and then swallows. She leans forward and gently presses her mouth against his. He stills under her touch. Even through his closed lips she can taste her Scotch, and she brushes her hand against his jaw. She tugs a little at his upper lip as she pulls back, and he follows her slightly with his mouth before letting her go. He stares at her. “Oh,” he says.

“We spent two months not being partners, and we survived,” she says.

“Barely,” he mutters.

“John said you only signed your divorce papers two weeks ago. We could use the distance, El.”

“You can leave me just like that?”

She sighs. “Nothing I do with you is ‘just like that’. Seven years is a long time to unravel.”

He shrugs, but she can see him relenting.

She smiles. “Maybe we should spend some more time… just seeing what happens.”

He slants a smile at her, and then, “Just to be clear, by ‘seeing what happens’ you do mean maybe doing more of that?” He glances at her mouth.

She hesitates. “Do you want to do more of that?”

“Do you?”

She sighs. “Jesus Christ, we’re never going to kiss again at this rate.”

His brows furrow, and then he’s leaning forward and his hand is sliding around the back of her neck, and then he’s kissing her, hard, and his mouth is pulling at hers until she parts her lips and lets his tongue slide against hers. He’s warm and sharp with the alcohol, and he kisses like he wants to swallow her whole.

She gasps a bit, against his mouth, as he pulls back.

“I never said never,” he repeats, softly, his thumb brushing lazily over her lips. He’s still very close.

“Well, then let’s try ‘maybe’,” she says, her lips moving against his fingers.

He smiles.

~end~

Whew. I think I'll do all the links tomorrow.

fic: law and order svu - elliot/olivia

Previous post Next post
Up
[]