Chapter Text
And who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
-Leonard Cohen
The company erupted in a chorus of groans and catcalls when Cragen announced the new probie was a woman. The guys spent the next three days grousing about how much sexual harassment training they would be subjected to and speculating about the size of her tits. Elliot maintained indifference, but on the nights he was at home with Kathy and the kids he deliberately kept the information to himself.
x
Olivia Benson wore her dark hair pinned into a severe bun at the crown of her head, but it wasn’t an attempt to hide her femininity at the firehouse.
She arrived each day wearing a tank top and jeans. Her lips were often painted a shade of red that made Elliot think of a bowl of cherries. She was slender but not delicate, and there was a fierceness in her eyes that kept the men on their best behavior when she was in the same room or Chief Cragen was within earshot. The worst they did was joke that as the woman of the house she was permanently assigned to meal prep.
Behind her back, though, the guys had a pool going on who would fuck her first. Franco was in the lead with Cassidy hot on his heels. Gavin boasted the honors would go to him because he needed the cash to pay for his wife’s anniversary gift; he was motivated by more than lust.
They didn’t bother to include Elliot.
x
Students from Greenbriar Academy started to file back into the building after a science experiment went awry. The fire was extinguished before Ladder 16 arrived on scene, and most of the company removed the outer layers of their gear and lingered around the rig.
Elliot exited the building and his eyes landed on Olivia leaning against the truck. She was wearing a tight white T-shirt with her bunker pants, and the suspenders were pulled up around her shoulders and taut against her breasts. He ignored the rush of blood to his groin.
She sat next to him on the ride back, and Tucker took a sharp turn that pitched her body against Elliot. Her hand landed on his thigh, and he felt heat climb through his body.
x
It was inevitable Olivia would overhear Cassidy talking about her ass or find one of Garrity’s lewd drawings crumpled in the trash. But she walked into the kitchen when Tucker said he wanted to move his money from Cassidy to Franco.
“You have a bet going on who I’ll screw first?” Olivia asked.
The men were silent, and the pallor of Cassidy’s skin was concerning.
“Who’s in the lead?” she asked, stepping closer to the table, leaning between two of them to see the sloppily written bracket.
Franco sheepishly raised his hand.
Olivia slid the paper closer and picked it up. She stepped back, leaning against the edge of the counter, and they all watched as her eyes scanned the page. “Why don’t you have Stabler on here?” she asked.
All eyes darted to Elliot, and he felt every muscle in his body clench.
“Stabler is our pious choir boy,” Gavin offered.
“You might as well take your money back,” she told them. “I have a policy. I don’t sleep with co-workers.” Olivia calmly set the paper back on the table and turned to leave.
The room was silent for a long stretch, broken when Cassidy pushed his chair away from the table and the legs squeaked on the floor. He reached his hand into the fishbowl of crumpled bills to take his money back, but paused when Franco said, “Hold on, Cassidy. We should bet on who can get Benson to break that policy.”
x
Elliot found her alone in the kitchen that night, pouring freshly brewed coffee into a mug. “Sorry about those guys,” he said, pointing his thumb over his shoulder toward the staircase to the bunks where the rest of the company was.
She shrugged. “That was nothing. This isn’t my first assignment.”
Elliot’s eyes followed her as she crossed to the fridge. She was wearing a standard navy FDNY T-shirt tucked into a pair of tactical pants, and he averted his eyes when she bent to reach a bottle of coffee creamer at the back of the bottom shelf.
“I was in the Bronx,” she went on, pouring cream into her mug. “These guys are teddy bears in comparison. The novelty of a woman in the crew will wear off.”
“They are good guys,” Elliot supplied.
“I get it. This job… it makes everyone a little wild. Except you, it seems.”
He looked up to see that she was smiling, as though she didn’t quite believe the claim he was beyond reproach.
x
Elliot noticed the inside door of her locker was bare. He thought maybe she didn’t want to be presumptuous about making it through her probation and being asked to stay.
Olivia asked about the drawing taped to the front of his locker.
He grinned. “That’s my Lizzie’s self-portrait,” he said, and he showed her the photographs and artwork lining the interior of the metal door.
He noticed Olivia’s lashes were plump with tears, and before he could ask what had upset her she was busying herself with breaking in a new pair of boots.
x
It didn’t take long for her to become one of the guys.
She bested all of them in a 5K charity run, and she was the secret weapon in their softball game against Ladder 19. Olivia was fast and agile and strong, and the crew felt like she was more than capable of carrying their asses down a flight of stairs if they passed out during an operation. Her bravery gave Elliot pause, though; being fearless wasn’t always an admirable quality.
The men stopped shutting down lewd conversations when she walked into the room. Instead, Olivia followed Franco’s claim of a threesome with two famous models by disclosing that she’d gone to bed with a Yankee the previous weekend. She refused to name him, offering only clues about his performance on the field. When Cassidy goaded her about the size of his dick, she said, “Not that impressive,” and proceeded to hold her palms about seven inches apart.
Cassidy blinked. “You mean while he was hard, right?”
Olivia shook her head.
“You know they’re all going home to measure their dicks,” Lieutenant Munch remarked as he shook his head and left the room.
x
The alarm sounded at eight o’clock and the crew bolted upright from their respective chairs or beds, taking turns down the pole to get into their gear. They piled into the rig and the lights flashed against the night sky. They were answering a call for a second alarm, and the mood was appropriately somber as they rode toward a fire that couldn’t be tamed by the first company on scene.
The brownstone was ablaze, and the flames licked closer to the homes at either side. Chief Cragen handed out assignments, putting Olivia with Elliot.
“Stay behind me,” Elliot ordered.
Olivia stared at him.
“Say you understand.”
“I’ll stay behind you,” she told him.
He flipped the shield down over his face and turned to lead her toward the brownstone to the right of the home that was destroyed. Elliot climbed the stairs, and he could see wisps of smoke coming from the floor above them. He turned down the clear hallway while Olivia proceeded to the next set of steps. He reached up, grabbing a handful of her coat, and shouted, “Benson! Stay behind me!”
“I hear someone up there,” she retorted.
Elliot heard something too – the crackle of the floorboards above them, the weight pressing down on the ceiling. They had a finite amount of time to scan the floor for civilians and get out. “This way,” he said, dragging her with him. The hallway gradually filled with smoke, and after he checked the last door and turned around, he couldn’t see Olivia.
“Benson!” He felt his way forward, coughing. “What the fuck did I say?” he screamed into the gray cloud.
As Elliot reached the staircase, the ceiling behind him crumpled, pieces of plaster and the floorboards from above crashing down. He cursed and made the sign of the cross, but before he could breach the stairs, flames erupted in front of him. He felt someone clawing at his legs, but it wasn’t Olivia.
“Get out now, Stabler!”
“Benson is up there!”
The top few stairs collapsed, throwing him backward. He got to his feet and had no choice but to retrace his steps to the entrance and escape out into the clear, breathable air. Elliot pushed his shield up immediately and called out, “Benson! Where is Benson?”
Cragen stormed toward him. “What do you mean where is she?”
Elliot turned back to look at the row of brownstones engulfed in flames. He watched the glass windows buckle under the heat and burst. He tilted his head back, his gaze reaching higher, and he saw a figure in yellow waving their arms. He squinted and knew it was Benson, cradling a child against her hip.
“Get the ladder!” he bellowed, and the team went to work.
The minute Olivia’s boots hit the ground and she passed the child to a medic, Elliot crowded her against the side of the rig. “What the fuck were you thinking, probie?”
She bristled at his use of the nickname. Her proud smile disintegrated. “I told you, I heard som-”
“And I told you to stay behind me!”
“I got the kid out alive,” she snapped, and she flinched when Elliot abruptly removed her helmet.
“You’re bleeding.”
She lifted her hand and felt a trail of sticky blood above her eyebrow.
“Go see a medic,” he told her, shoving the helmet against her chest before he turned and walked away.
x
Elliot walked into the empty sleeping quarters and peeled his shirt up his torso and over his head. He shucked it forcefully into the hamper and started unbuckling his belt. He turned the corner toward the showers and nearly collided with Olivia. A wet, nearly naked Olivia.
“Excuse me,” she said, shifting sideways to go around him.
She was wearing a robe and her wet hair hung down her back. It was the first time he had ever seen it down, and it was much longer than he realized. Elliot heard the barely contained rage in the two words she spoke, and he followed her toward the bunk she had claimed with her duffel and said, “I’m the one who gets to be pissed off.”
Olivia sighed. “Why is that?” she asked, brushing her hair.
The act of trailing the bristles through her damp locks released the fragrance of her shampoo into the air. It was feminine and herbaceous, and Elliot took a deep breath of it. “You were my responsibility.”
She turned to look at him, tossing the brush onto the bed.
“I could report you for insubordination,” he went on.
“You’re not my chief. You’re not even my lieutenant.”
He shrugged and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m your senior firefighter. I have a decade more of experience. I don’t like working with daredevils. Is that what you are, Olivia?”
“I saved a child.”
“I have a family,” he told her softly. “My goal every single day is that I make it back to them alive. I can’t work with people who defy orders and need to be rescued and-”
“I didn’t need to be rescued!”
Elliot scrubbed a hand down his face. “You have a family, Benson?”
She held her breath.
He waited.
“My mother.”
“Think about her the next time you go against orders.”
Olivia snorted a laugh. “Not the best motivation to use on me, Stabler,” she huffed, turning back to dig in her duffel.
Elliot clasped his hand around her upper arm and pulled. She wrenched out of his grasp, loosening the tie around her waist. The distance between the lapels of her silk robe widened, and in the seconds before she clutched them together, he saw a hint of the swell of her breasts. He was suddenly parched. And boneless. He stepped back until he felt the edge of a bed dig into his calves, and he dropped into a seated position across from where she stood. “Do you know what I’m really mad about?” he asked, barely audible.
Olivia took a few steps closer. “What?”
He tilted his head back, chancing a look at her. Olivia’s proximity made his pulse accelerate and he could see the shape of her nipples under the silk that separated him from her bare flesh. “I thought you were gone. And I would have never forgiven myself.”
She tucked her bottom lip under her teeth.
Elliot dropped his gaze to her feet on the floor. He flinched when he felt her cool hand cup his chin, urging him to look at her. He did, and he felt his hand move of its volition, clasping behind her knee and down to the hem of her robe. His fingers slid beneath the material and climbed toward her thigh until they were both startled apart by the sound of the stairs creaking under the weight of heavy boots.
By the time Cassidy reached the landing, Olivia’s back was to Elliot, removing clean clothes from her bag, and he had managed to recline on his side facing away from her.
x
He caught himself staring at her during dinner.
Elliot spent more time watching Olivia wash the rig than he did pitching in.
Every time Kathy pointed out that he was spending more time at the firehouse he chalked it up to being shorthanded.
It had nothing to do with the sound of Olivia’s laughter or falling asleep with barely twelve inches between their beds.
x
The day Olivia’s probationary period ended Cragen brought a cake and the crew made a production out of replacing the Probie label on her locker with a permanent placard of Benson.
Cassidy suggested going to O’Leary’s at the end of their shift, and the bar stayed open and the kitchen cooked eggs and bacon.
“I gotta make a call,” Elliot told no one in particular. He pushed through the back door, to the alley, and found Olivia leaning against the brick building with her hands covering her face. “You okay?”
She startled at his voice. “Shit.” She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “I’m fine.”
Elliot moved closer to her. He reached out, drawing the pad of his thumb from the apple of her cheek to the corner of her mouth, absorbing the trail of a tear. “You sure?”
“No,” she admitted. Olivia shrugged. “It’s ridiculous.”
“I doubt that.”
“No, it is.” She drove her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. “I called my mom to let her know I made it and I’m staying on here. She said ‘I don’t know if this is better or worse than you being a cop.’ I don’t know what I expected. It’s just that, after what you said about family… I don’t have a death wish, El. But I don’t have that same motivation as you. And the only two careers I ever considered were this and NYPD.”
He wanted to respond with something profound, but he could only focus on how she had shortened his name.
“Forget it,” she sighed, shaking her head. “I had too many mimosas.”
“You wanted to be a cop?” he asked.
She smiled. “I had to decide if I wanted to go by bullet or by fire.”
He winced. “You’re not going anywhere for a long time, Liv. You’ll be a good firefighter. A good partner for all of us.” He was aware that she had arched her back against the wall, pushing her pelvis toward him, but Elliot didn’t know when he had hooked his thumbs through the beltloops of her jeans. He pulled her hips flush against him, and he pressed a kiss to her temple, pretending for a moment that he could keep things chaste. He kissed along her jaw and hovered near her mouth.
Olivia lifted her arms and clasped her hands at the back of his neck, closing the distance between them as her lips claimed his.
Elliot shuffled his feet, pressing her to the wall, pushing every inch of his body against hers. He could taste the sweetness of orange juice and the sour notes of cheap champagne that lingered on her tongue. It felt like he was floating outside of himself, and when his rational mind snapped back into his body, he leaned back with a heavy breath.
“Elliot,” she whispered, her tone apologetic.
He shook his head. He lifted his right hand to clutch her chin, his fingers digging into her jaw, the pad of his pinky finger pressed against the pulse in her neck. Elliot studied her eyes, and he could see the same fear and desire that he felt. He bent toward Olivia and kissed her with a fierce need, and he moaned at the warm, wet slide of her tongue against his.
He would have taken her right there, in the alley behind the bar, if his phone hadn’t sounded like an alarm, pulling him back to the reality of his life.