Work Text:
TW: William Lewis (Nothing super graphic, but as always, please take care of yourselves.)
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When Olivia was four years old, she fell and hit her head on the corner of her mother’s old coffee table. It was made of dark wood, stained and scratched and rickety to the touch, but somehow it didn’t break when Olivia fell into it. Instead, it left a cut above her right eyebrow that bled enough to frighten her at the time, but her mother was quick to hold a compress to it and dry her daughter’s tears.
Head wounds bleed a lot, sweetheart. You’ll be just fine.
This was during one of the sporadic times throughout Olivia’s childhood when Serena had been sober.
The wound left a scar that’s still visible today, but Olivia has never minded it. She has plenty of traumatic memories from her childhood, but this isn’t one of them. A part of her loves the scar for its mundanity.
The coffee table survived, against all odds, well into Olivia’s adulthood. When her mother died tragically, unexpectedly, Olivia had been tasked with cleaning out Serena’s home in the weeks following her death. She donated almost everything to a local women’s shelter, but Olivia kept the old coffee table.
By that point it was so old and fragile, she would’ve felt awful donating it to someone new. Besides, it had a small nick in one corner that matched the one above Olivia’s brow. Their scars were tied to one another. It was just an old, faded chip in a worn piece of wood, but it was an imperfection she couldn’t help but love.
A decade and change after her mother’s death, a nightmare found its way into the cozy apartment she’d called home for as long as she’d been a detective. The nightmare had a name- lots of them do- but she tries not to say it out loud these days unless absolutely necessary.
The nightmare destroyed everything in her life, from her sense of safety to her ravaged apartment to her body that was burned and bruised. When she finally worked up the nerve to return to the place that would never be home again, she discovered that the nightmare had also destroyed her mother’s old coffee table in his fits of maniacal rage.
Her poor boyfriend couldn’t understand why this discovery sent her reeling into such despair. After all, the whole apartment and most of her furniture was destroyed. She herself was still healing from all the ways the nightmare had shattered her. She never could tell him why she was so upset about this old, splintered coffee table on top of everything else.
It was too damaged to be fixed, so it had to be dispensed with the rest of the carnage. When Cassidy quietly took it downstairs to the dumpster, she allowed herself a moment to grieve another lost relic of who she used to be. She’d already lost so many vital parts of herself during those years. Parts that didn’t seem to plan on returning, no matter how they maimed her as they walked away.
She developed so many new scars in those days.
Now, she applies vitamin E to the faded marks on her body when she remembers to do so, but it doesn’t matter as much as it once did. It’s been almost a decade since the nightmare first tried to destroy her, and the days of dutifully following her doctor’s instructions in the aftermath are long gone. The scars are as faded as they will ever be without surgical intervention, and she no longer feels the need to wear low-cut or low-rise anything that might draw attention to them. And, aside from a devastating lapse in judgement last fall, she hasn’t been intimate with another person in years.
Olivia’s scars remain hidden from anyone who doesn’t know where to look. There are even days when, miraculously, she doesn’t think about them at all.
Unless.
Unless she starts to think about her future with… well, with a previously lost part of her. One of the parts that so decimated her when he left. Before the nightmare. Before her son. Before everything.
It’s almost funny, in a cruel sort of way, that she finally reached a point where she could go any length of time without thinking about the scars, only for him to came back into her life. Only for him to have the audacity to make her contemplate whether she should show him these parts of her. Whether she can handle his grief for the parts of her he doesn’t yet know are forever changed.
When she allows herself the luxury of thinking about it, the possibility of him, of them, a still-scorched part of her recoils at the idea. It’s almost enough to stop her from reaching for his already-outstretched hand.
Almost.
They’ve been meeting up during their off-time lately, despite the parts of her that are still wary of him. Not dating, no. They’re not dates. Just… friendly dinners. And friendly drinks. Sometimes he tries to pick up the tab, which she politely- but firmly- declines.
“I don’t want to owe you, Elliot,” she says one night, after her third glass of wine.
He takes a sip of his own Cabernet before responding.
“Oh, don’t worry about that, ‘Livia. God knows I’ll never break even on everything I owe you.”
She chuckles good-naturedly, but the sentiment cuts just a bit too close to a major artery for her liking.
“Y’got me there.”
She still tries to Venmo him for half when he steals the check right out of her hands later.
“S’fine, Liv. I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it up to me,” he smirks, waggling those absurd eyebrows at her before looking down to add a tip.
She shakes her head to physically rid herself of the feeling the comment gives her, because he’s been doing that lately. Flirting. Openly. She’d almost decked him a few weeks ago when he complimented her hair in front of Fin, who said nothing in the moment but still looked incredibly curious to know more.
It’s August now. Months have passed since Mother’s Day, when he first met her son. She has become more comfortable spending time with him lately, but she still keeps him at arm’s length where Noah is concerned. Usually he’s with Lucy or Rollins when she sees Elliot, but this week he’s at a sleep-away dance camp upstate, and she misses him terribly. The bright side is that she doesn’t have to do the usual song and dance of declining Elliot’s offer to come over so she doesn’t have to leave Noah.
He gets attached, Olivia tells him.
So let him, he replies.
She can’t. Not yet. Around and around they go.
Tonight, she can leave her apartment freely, with no obligations for the next 36 hours unless Fin calls with an emergency at the squad.
Unfortunately, Elliot knows this, too.
“Y’wanna get outta here?” His voice takes on that soft lilt that disarms her.
“Uh, sure. Nightcap?” Because she needs to make clear to him that she’s not openly agreeing to… other activities, where her empty apartment is concerned.
He nods, and they both slide out of the booth, his hand reaching the small of her back as she makes her way to the front of the bar. She tries to ignore it, but she doesn’t outright shrug him off anymore.
Baby steps.
They walk back to her apartment in the late summer twilight. His hand no longer rests at the small of her back, but she can feel his open palm brushing against her wrist in silent invitation. They’ve held hands before, in times of stress, or mutual comfort, but never like this. Never this. It would be so easy, she thinks, to reach for him.
It’s what she’s been fighting against for the last eight months. It shouldn’t be so easy after all this time. It shouldn’t. It can’t. She’s fought tooth and nail for everything she’s ever had. How could it possibly be this simple?
She steels herself. Reaches out.
Their fingers intertwine, and it’s the ease of it all that makes her stomach drop.
They walk the remaining blocks in silence, both unwilling to break the spell of her newfound courage.
“I, um,” she hedges.
“Oh. Sorry.”
Olivia pulls her hand away apologetically to dig through her purse for her keys. He clears his throat and tries to appear nonchalant while she checks her mail. Her doorman eyes him suspiciously.
“He doesn’t like me very much, does he?” Elliot whispers.
“Well, he remembers you drunkenly staggering your way to my apartment in the middle of the night, so…”
“Ah. That.”
“C’mon, let’s go upstairs.”
“Lead the way, Cap’n.”
She rolls her eyes.
Her apartment is dark and quiet with Noah gone. Elliot’s been here a handful of times in the past few months, so he doesn’t feel taken aback by it anymore. All the soft neutrals and airiness. Modern furniture and children’s shoes by the door.
“Noah like dance camp?” He asks, as he places his own shoes next to the child-sized Converse.
“Loves it so much he’s only texted me twice to say he’s alive,” she laughs.
“What’s the worst that could happen? He pirouettes into the lake?”
She smacks his arm on the way to her kitchen.
“Wine?”
“Sure.”
She pours them each a glass and slides one across the countertop to where he’s seated on the other side.
“So…”
“So.”
“Why is this always so awkward?” She says with a small smile, clinking glasses with him.
“Feels like I’m out past curfew.”
“You skip curfew a lot, Stabler?”
“Every time I turn around I swear I see Cragen glaring at us,” he whispers conspiratorially.
“We deserved it every time,” she laughs, shaking her head. “My detectives aren’t half the trouble we were back in the day.”
“Oh, I bet. Couldn’t argue with our closure rate, though.”
“Psych evals notwithstanding, of course,” she adds around another sip of wine.
“Funny.”
“Whatcha wanna listen to?” She asks, pulling her phone out of her back pocket and connecting it to a Bluetooth speaker in the living room. She leans forward a bit, elbows on the counter in front of her as she taps away at her phone.
He doesn’t mean to glance at her chest. He used to be better at avoiding that, back when they were partners. But he’s single now, and what they are to each other is different these days. Verging on something intimate. And so he feels like slightly less of a scumbag if his eyes are drawn to her in that way every once in awhile.
But this time is different. This time, he sees it. Well, them.
Tiny, faded, circular scars smattered across her chest and dipping below the neckline of her top. Most of them are smooth, but a few are slightly puckered, visible even in the low light. He worked SVU long enough to know exactly what those scars are from.
She hasn’t noticed him staring yet, still preoccupied with choosing a playlist on Spotify.
“Elliot?”
He snaps out of it, forcing himself to look her in the eye. She thankfully doesn’t notice where he’d previously been looking, but she’s eyeing him suspiciously.
“You good?“
“Yeah, sorry. Uh, how ‘bout… I don’t care, you choose.”
“You’re no help at all.”
She puts on a playlist that appears to be 70’s soft rock, then stands up straight to continue sipping her wine. The scars are no longer visible, but he can’t stop thinking about them.
They’re definitely not fresh, probably years old by now if he had to guess, but he is damn sure it had to have happened after he left. Whatever it is. He didn’t stare at her like that back then, but he sure as shit would have noticed if she had healed cigarette burns all over her.
You have not asked me one question about what has happened to me since you left.
She said that to him at Christmas. Eight months ago she stood in front of him on a dark frozen street, all but begging him to see that she’s changed. To understand that she’s different now.
He understood this on an intellectual level. Noticed that her demeanor was different than he remembered. While she could be brash and impulsive back when they were partners, she is now more stoic, muted. He’d assumed it was the nature of experience, being tasked with the enormous responsibility of being in charge, of being calm under pressure. And sure, it probably is that, to an extent.
But when he first returned last year, he was admittedly startled to see how… defeated she looked. How weary she seemed, deep in her soul. She was still in charge, a commanding presence in any room she walked into, and younger officers obeyed her every assured order. But in the quiet moments, she would deflate. He watched the compartmentalization of who she was and who she was expected to be in real time.
She is stronger than anyone he’s ever known. This, he knows instinctively. It’s a universal invariant to him; like time, or the love he has for his kids. But there are parts of her that fundamentally changed in the ten years they were apart, and he is now desperate to know everything. All of the things that shaped her while she was here without him.
Did anyone take care of her? Did anyone try?
“Elliot.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re a million miles away.”
“M’sorry. Just… thinking.”
“Anything good?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well.”
They drink in silence for a moment.
“I, um. I have to ask you something.”
“Ok…” she hedges. “What’s up?”
“The, um. When you leaned over earlier,” he starts, staring into his glass. “I didn’t mean to… but I couldn’t help but notice you have, uh. Scars?”
Her eyebrows raise in recognition, her mouth forming an “oh” as she sets her own wine glass down.
“Takes a bit of the fun out of looking, huh,” is her response.
“No...no. I mean, I didn’t-“ he’s rubbing his neck and wishing the floor would swallow him whole. “Which answer doesn’t get me kicked outta here right now?” He winces.
She takes a moment, sobers. Decides to have mercy on him.
“Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t notice ‘em before now.”
“Y’know, contrary to what you may think, Liv, I really don’t make a habit of starin’ at your chest.”
“No, no. I know that. Really,” she assures him. “Even when we were partners. I know it wasn’t like that.”
“Good,” he nods. At least he’d done something right.
“I, ah. M’not gonna get into it tonight, not completely. I just… I can’t. And it’s really kind of a long story, and we’ve been drinking…” she rambles.
“Liv.”
“But you deserve you know.”
“Olivia. I don’t deserve anything you’re not offering. Ok?”
She exhales, “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Not even necessary. Just… when did it happen?”
She leans back against the refrigerator, still facing him across the small kitchen floor and the breakfast bar he’s still seated at.
“2013. S’been almost ten years,” she says, mostly to herself.
“And… the bastard who did this. Is he…”
“Oh, he’s long dead.”
“Good.”
And yeah, it’s good that Lewis is no longer alive to torment her. But she’s still here, living with the trauma, even after all these years. Elliot wasn’t here for any of it. She still resents him a little for that.
She rolls her eyes and stares at the ground.
“I, uh. I have more.”
He knits his brows in confusion.
“More…?”
“Scars, Elliot. I have more. They’re… I don’t. I don’t look like I used to.” And god, he’s never heard her sound so small.
“Liv, I’m… so sorry. About all of it. And you don’t owe me the full story, ever, if you don’t want to, but I do wanna know some day, if you’re willing,” he adds.
“I am. Willing, I mean. I want you to know, and I…. I kind of have to, if we’re going to, you know, continue this,” she says haltingly, gesturing between them.
Which is fair, and probably true, but he hates that this is the first time she’s ever truly acknowledged where this is heading. This thing between them. It feels so deeply fucked that it’s intertwined with whatever horror she’d experienced while he was away.
The question that’s been clawing at him finally comes to a head as she brushes her hair out of her eyes.
“You, uh, you had someone then. Right? Whatever happened… You had someone to take care o’ you?”
“I...”
“Please, Liv. Did you?”
“Why does it matter, Elliot,” she says in a near-monotone, eyes fixed on the floor. Devoid of emotion. “It was nearly a decade ago. Why does it matter now?”
“I just… need… to know…” He’s fighting for every word. Needs her to understand. It’s too late for it to really matter, he knows. But it still matters to him. It always will. “I need to know someone loved you, then. Please. Please tell me someone loved you.”
When I couldn’t, is what he doesn’t say.
“No one’s, um,” she starts, staring at her shoes. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
“I need to know, Olivia.”
A sheen of unshed tears threaten to spill as she rolls her eyes at her herself. At her own humiliation. At the reality that even after so many years, the nightmare still haunts her.
“Yeah,” she breathes. “Yeah, I had someone who took really good care of me.”
“Ed?”
“No, no. This was,” she shakes her head, “…anyway. It was a long time ago. He did his best, but he just couldn’t handle it. In the end, it was too much for him.”
“Bastard.”
“You,” she says venomously, “have no right to cast judgement on the people who took care of me while you were nowhere to be found.”
He backtracks immediately.
“You’re right, I’m sorry.”
“You should be. You should be because… I needed you, Elliot. Just knowing that you were looking for me during those four days would’ve been-“
“Four days? Jesus Christ.”
“Most people come back from a beach house with a tan or something,” she quips. “I got cigarette burns.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. Well. It was a long time ago.”
“I’m so… sorry’s not enough, Liv. God.”
They let the silence settle over them for a while after that. The reality of it constricts his heart, but he reminds himself that she’s here, she’s ok, and she’s still letting him in.
She clears her throat awkwardly, unsure how to proceed.
“More wine?“ He asks, nodding to her empty glass.
“I, uh, can I show you something?”
“Okay,” because this could go a million different ways, but he would do anything for her. Anything.
She disappears down the hall without another word, so he follows.
He finds himself in her bedroom, another cozy room filled with soft creams and airy fabrics. She turns on a lamp that casts warmth across the room instead of a harsh overhead light. She always hated those, he remembers. Hurt her eyes after a long shift. Gave her a migraine on the really bad days.
“What are we-“
She turns to face him, and he’s usually pretty bad at knowing when to shut the fuck up, but he stops talking immediately when he sees her reach for the hem of her shirt. She makes eye contact as she raises it up, then pulls it over her head and tosses it on the bed. They stand in silence, both looking at each other through a prism of unshed tears as she dares him to look. To see the true extent of what he’d missed.
He looks.
Her chest and torso are smattered with tiny scars from cigarette burns. They might even dip below her bra, but he wouldn’t know for sure unless she removed it. There’s a thin line that wraps around her torso and dips down into her pants, and his eyes track its path, then look up to her in question.
“Coat hanger,” she whispers, her voice thick as she tilts her head, nearly apologetic.
The revelation doesn’t hit him like a brick. It envelopes him, constricting until he can’t breathe. He takes three paces towards her, stopping just within arm’s reach. He looks to her for permission, so she nods and watches him reach out to trace the path across her stomach before pulling back when he reaches the hem of her pants. The implication of how few clothes she must have been wearing when this happened sits between them as he meets her eyes. Asking.
“He didn’t rape me,” she says. “At least, as far as I know.”
“What does that-“
“I couldn’t… remember. And the, the rape kit was inconclusive. So.”
“Liv, I’m…”
“You don’t have to say it, Elliot,” and god, she’s exhausted. She closes her eyes. “Just wanted you to know before… you know, in case we ever…”
“In case we ever,” he responds.
“Yeah,” she sighs, then turns to grab her shirt. That’s when he sees the scar on her side, just above her waist. It’s approximately rectangle-shaped, and the scar tissue on this one is noticeably thicker than the others.
“The hell is that one?”
“Oh, um, that’s,” she looks down at it. Sighs in resignation. “That’s… your badge, Elliot. The one you sent me. I, um. I kept it on the butt of my gun for awhile. That one didn’t heal as well as the others did. Doctor offered to refer me to a plastic surgeon but I just… I wanted it to be over. I didn’t wanna see another doctor.”
“God,” he chokes. He reaches out, traces two fingers over it with the gentlest touch she’s ever seen from him, and she feels the dam about to break. Feels her control slipping away from her with the tears now staining his cheeks.
She steps back.
Pulls her shirt over her head, and shoulders past him back into her living room. It’s too much. She hadn’t meant to do this tonight. They’re still so fragile and he’s so gentle and it’s too much. It’s all too much.
When he finds her in the living room, she’s pacing along the far wall.
“Hey,” he says, staying near the kitchen to give her the space she clearly wants right now. “What just happened?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
Fuck, Liv. We just started. We’re almost there. Finally. We can’t give up on it now.
“Do…what, exactly,” is what he says instead.
“This! This, Elliot. This thing where you try to pay for dinner and you tell me I’m pretty and you hold my hand-“
“Technically, you held my hand.”
“Oh right, Elliot, because you hadn’t been brushing my wrist for three blocks,” she rolls her eyes. She’s still pacing.
“Is this about what happened just now? Because I swear to you, ‘Livia. It doesn’t change anything for me.”
“But that’s just it, Elliot. It changed everything for me. My whole life was torn apart over the course of four days. I didn’t even have a home to return to when I got out of the hospital. He destroyed it. I had nothing. Nothing and no one. And to you, I’m sure it’s upsetting to see the physical evidence of it, but you don’t have the trauma of it deep in your muscle memory. You don’t know that I’m claustrophobic now, and that the smell of cigarettes makes me nauseous. Or that I can’t handle being within ten feet of someone drinking vodka. You don’t know any of these things and-“
“I can learn.”
“What?”
“I can learn all of it. I want to learn all of it.”
“And what happens if you can’t? What happens if you wake up one day and it’s all just too much for you to deal with? The days when the idea of having sex is repulsive to me. The days when I only have the mental capacity to make my son dinner and then put him to bed. The days when, when I just can’t be the Olivia you think I am.”
“You are.”
“I’m not!”
“‘Livia would you just-“
She stops pacing and turns on her heel, fists clenched, as far away from him as her living room will allow.
“You left, Elliot! You left for ten. years. And I, I just. I grew, and I changed, and I rebuilt everything from the ground up. I fought like hell to be where I am today. And every step of the way I would look to my left and I would look to my right and I, I was… I was alone. I was surrounded by people, people who I love and who love me back. People who wanted me to succeed. But it never felt right. I am a whole person without you, but I never once wanted to go through all of those things without you with me. I needed you here, as my partner. Where you always were. And then one day you just… you weren’t. And everything was different after that.”
She hugs herself and stares across the room at him, and fuck he can’t believe he ever left her.
He crosses the room, gently pulls her by the shoulders into a hug, his mouth resting at her temple. She sags into him, the fight drained from her before he even speaks.
“You,” he starts, slowly and quietly, “are the most incredible person I’ve ever known. And there was never a single day in the past two decades that I didn’t wanna take care o’ you. I know you can do all this on your own, ‘Livia. Y’been doin’ this a long time. But you deserve to have someone look after you. S’why I cared so much about asking you about it before. You deserve for someone to love you.”
You deserve love, Olivia Benson.
She lets out a single, choked sob, and hugs him back.
“I’m not the same, Elliot,” she pleads. Begs him to understand what he’s getting himself into.
“You’re right, you’re not,” he says. “You’re better. You’re stronger. You picked yourself up and you made yourself better, and I don’t know how the hell you found the strength to do it but my god am I grateful you’re here with me right now.”
She sniffles. He continues.
“I understand if you don’t want this, or if you’re not ready. You tell me you don’t want it and I’ll stop doin’ all that stuff right now. Payin’ for dinner, holding your hand, all of it. But don’t try to stop this from happening because you think you need to protect me from… you. God, Liv. You’re… nothing could stop me from wanting this. Nothing could stop me from wanting you.”
There’s a long pause, both of them holding their breath as they continue their embrace. She finally takes a deep breath.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, I… I want this. So much,” she whispers.
“Okay,” he grins, kissing the old scar just above her brow.
She’s shown him a lot of new scars tonight, but this one is as familiar to him as her eyes. It’s been there, unchanging, for as long as they’ve known each other. He knows she loves it because the story behind it is boring- some childhood incident or another- but he loves it simply because it’s a part of her.
He can’t wait to love her other scars, too. He already does.