Work Text:
Olivia gets the message mid-afternoon. The squad room is quiet...Fin is prepping for court with Carisi, Bruno and Velasco are finishing their paperwork on the case they had been working and the arrest they made earlier.
Olivia keeps her eyes on her paperwork as she picks up her phone to unlock the screen and read the message. Amanda.
Carisi's mom has the kids, and you mentioned Noah convinced you to let him go on that sleepover. I have wine. You have glasses. And a couch.
There’s a winking face emoji too.
Olivia raises an eyebrow at the last sentence. She’s been waiting for Amanda to follow through with her not so veiled threat.
You owe me.
She stares at the screen as the words appear, wiling them to disappear, knowing Amanda is tenacious enough to show up unannounced. But, also, that Amanda will tell her what she needs to hear in that honest brazen way of hers, even if she isn’t ready to hear it. She sighs, calculating how long she’ll be in the office. She types an answer.
I’ll be home by seven.
Olivia goes about her day, hoping for something to give her reason to cancel as her anxiety builds. She thinks about messaging Elliot, someone to share her embarrassment but then realises that would only lead to further embarrassment. Then he’ll know she’s shared details of their relationship, however vague, with Amanda.
Waking up next to him would have been awkward enough, but to be woken by Noah with Amanda and Fin on the other end of the phone?
Noah is old enough to know that her relationship with Elliot is evolving. So, when she sputtered around the subject, he told her she didn’t have to explain. He likes Elliot and he has no problem with them spending time together, whether they’re dating or not.
Her work day ends without flair or intervention and she has no excuse but to face her fate. Her drive is uneventful and she sighs as she walks through her front door.
She walks through the apartment, flipping on lights as she goes. She checks all rooms before retreating to her bedroom to shower and change. She wants to be comfortable for an uncomfortable conversation.
Olivia emerges thirty minutes later. The phone in her hand vibrates as she walks from the bedroom to the kitchen.
Buzz me in.
Her doorbell sounds out through the apartment and Olivia smiles as she crosses to her door to press the intercom.
“Hey, Liv, I’m downstairs,” Amanda’s Georgian accent comes through loud and clear.
“Why am I letting you in again?” Olivia tries. “I don’t need to put myself through an interrogation.”
“Well, it’s this or I book you a hotel room for your birthday and give Stabler the room number,” Amanda tells her, calling her bluff. “But that would be copying Fin’s idea.”
Her diaphragm coils as she tries not to laugh. Shaking her head, Olivia admits Amanda entry into her building.
Her blonde friend gives her a knowing smile as soon as she opens the front door. In her hand are two bottles of wine, one red and one white. Her smile falters when she notices the expression on Olivia’s face. She holds her hands as best as possible in a placating gesture with her hands full.
“I’m teasing, I come in peace, I promise,” Amanda says. “Look, we can get takeout and drink and talk about the kids if you want, no pressure.”
“It’s fine,” Olivia feels herself softening. “Come on in.”
She leads her fellow officer into the living room, then the kitchen. Amanda stashes the white wine in the fridge and grabs two glasses as Olivia gets the takeout menus and the bottle opener from the draw. Silently, they return to the living room when their tasks are complete.
Sitting side by side, Olivia opens the wine and pours them each a glass as Amanda leafs through the menus, choosing two. Wohop and the pizza place down near the station.
She points to the pizza menu. Wohop holds memories and precious bottable moments attached, and she doesn’t need to think about them when she’s with Amanda; she’d smell blood in the water.
“Pepperoni or veggie?” Amanda asks as she checks the toppings.
“Half and half?” Olivia counters. She places the order quickly when Amanda nods her agreement.
Amanda holds out one of the glasses to her. “What are we toasting?”
Olivia thinks for a minute. “Mixed messages,” she quips.
Amanda snorts and clinks her glass against Olivia’s. They both drink and Olivia can feel Amanda’s eyes on her. “What?”
Might as well get it over with, there’s no sense in dragging the evening out.
Amanda’s eyes widen for a fraction of a second, the tiniest smirk playing on her lips. She was expecting deflection and evasion, Olivia Benson’s speciality. “You’re ready to address the elephant in the room? Already?”
“Do you want me to change my mind?”
Amanda just rolls her eyes and taps her glass against Olivia’s again. “Okay, I’m just going to ask,” she warns her. “Are you guys together? Dating?”
“We’re spending time together, I’m not sure if it counts as dating,” Olivia replies. “We haven’t kissed. We haven’t discussed it.”
“But you fell asleep on the couch together?”
Olivia winces internally. “Yeah, yeah, we did that.” She pauses. “We haven’t talked about that either.”
Amanda considers her for a long minute. “What do you want? With Stabler?”
She takes a sip of her wine, holds it in her mouth to give herself a moment to think before answering. She swallows. “Do you remember how I told you how paralysing the possibilities are now?”
Amanda nods, her eyes focused, cautious, and full of understanding. That conversation was nearly three years ago yet not much has changed since then.
“Do you know how much harder it is to make that decision with expectations and anticipation? Not just mine and Elliot's, but everyone else is just watching, waiting for something to happen like it's inevitable. There are so many people invested in our relationship.”
“The scrutiny makes it worse,” Amanda supplies.
Olivia nods. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
“We get enough of that at work,” her friend jokes.
“Right?” She huffs out a laugh. “Should it be this hard?”
“It was only hard for me and Carisi when we were fighting the way we felt.”
Olivia thinks about it and remembers what Rollins and Carisi have is an exception rather than a rule.
Would it be that simple? Could she let herself stop fighting the way she feels about Elliot? Should she?
“I’ve wanted him for so long, longer than I should have, I don’t know how not to,” Olivia admits. Elliot has been off limits for the majority of their relationship, his marriage, then his absence. Since he came back there’s an openness between them that never existed. Their denials are long since passed, replaced by acknowledgement and deflection while they each worked through their personal issues. His grief, her fear.
His grief worked quicker than her fear. Their combined guilt was a shared issue, dealt with on their own, and neither could truly absolve themselves for.
“And what about Kathy?” Olivia poses the question, unsure why. “What would she think? She thought...she knew.”
“Maybe she’d want him to be happy,” Amanda supplies for a woman she never met.
“I’m not sure if she’d want it to be with me,” Olivia answers, remembering a conversation years ago in the park, remembering the letter she received when Elliot came back into her life.
In her head, she knows Kathy was projecting her own insecurities. Kathy hadn’t expected to die in such a horrific, sudden way. She expected to live with the possibility of returning to New York. With that letter she made a boundary, so if they were going to be in each other’s lives again, Olivia knew exactly where she stood.
That boundary was erected even in her death the moment Elliot gave Olivia the letter.
That boundary they were working their way through, creating the balance he had asked for after she called him out for giving her the letter in the first place. They’re fighting for it. Creating time by sending messages, calling, coffee, dinner. Falling asleep on the couch was just the most recent.
“What about what Elliot wants?” Amanda’s question breaks through her thoughts. She isn’t commenting on the past, only the present. That’s what matters. The present creating their future. “I’m not going pretend to know everything about your relationship with him, because I don’t. All I know is what I saw when I arrived at SVU.”
Olivia looks at her, not glaring, not imploring, at her to stop. So Amanda doesn’t.
“I saw a lot of pain, I saw a lot of love,” her friend tells her quietly. “I knew it was complicated, I knew it wasn’t just rumors. But I wouldn’t have been able to talk like this with you back then.”
“What about now?” As awkward as this is for her, Olivia is curious and she knows Amanda, like Fin, will be honest with her. “You’ve tried to talk to me since he came back.”
“Yeah, because you look like you needed to talk even though you don’t want to and you’re still processing.” Amanda pauses and leans forward to put her glass on the coffee table. “He shot a kid, a victim's daughter. I can’t imagine staying after that.”
She sucks in a breath, stealing herself for her next words. “Leaving without a word? Yeah, that kinda sucks, but I’m not going to judge him for leaving if that’s the reason he left. Besides,” Amanda meets Olivia’s eyes. “You let him back into your life. I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t if he was really that guy.”
Olivia shakes her head. “He really isn’t.”
If I heard your voice, I would never have been able to leave.
“Then I’m following your lead,” the younger woman tells her, cutting her off before her head follows his words. “It’s your life, not mine. I’m following Fin’s lead, too. Others thought you did the wrong thing by letting him back in and tried to protect you, but Fin hasn’t. He’s the only one who was with you guys the first-time round, so he’s going to know better than any of us sitting on the sidelines, looking in.”
“I’m not going to talk to Fin about this.”
“No chance,” Amanda says around a smile. “Can you imagine?”
Olivia looks down into her wine glass, smiling, thinking of their friend. She and Fin have spoken in their own short-handed way. He’s checked in, gotten a read on her before backing off. “Fin’s a good friend. Knows when to stay out of it, knows when not to.”
“Something like that,” Amanda mumbles as she picks up her wine for a sip. “Have you talked about what Elliot wants?”
Olivia sighs. Her tone is knowing, a little teasing. “I thought you came in peace,” she rolls her eyes.
“I started with peace; I’m edging towards chaos,” the blonde shrugs. “Or stepping back into it. Scratch what I asked about what Elliot wants, why’d you let him back into your life?”
“I know what it’s like to be the one who comes back,” Olivia admits.
Silence answers her as she watches Amanda process her declaration. She remembers how difficult it was to be the one who tried to fit back into his life. She may have only been gone for a few months, rather than years, but knows how it feels.
“Wait, hang on,” Amanda’s fingers touch her wrist, concern and disbelief clear in her expression. “You left?”
Olivia nods. "A couple of times," she tells her. “I was in and out of the squad for a few weeks,” she continues. “Elliot and I needed space from one another. We were about eight years in. We had come off a case that went sideways, and we chose each other over the job. That was the first time we acknowledged it was...complicated...between us. Then I went undercover for the FBI, couldn’t tell him.”
She’s very aware of Amanda’s eyes. Blue, silver, unfocused, processing the new information and how it all fits into the bigger picture. Olivia won’t divulge how that was the start or how hard they fought each other and fought for each other during that time. She was angry at him, at herself, for feeling the way they felt, for jeopardising their partnership.
“Sounds rough,” Amanda says, her eyes flickering into focus. “You guys got through it though.”
“We did,” Olivia nods. “We were stronger for it in the end.”
And they were, their bond was stronger. A frickin’ minefield, but stronger. An earned bond.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Rather removes the denial and deflection reigns in its place.” Olivia needs more wine and she hasn’t finished her first glass yet.
“For what it’s worth, I think he could make you happy.”
Olivia thinks about the last two years, getting used to the balance. They’re orbiting each other’s life, not as colleagues as friends. They talk...not about them...but about their day-to-day, bouncing ideas off one another, offering insight. He still understands her better than anyone.
Of course, talking made it easier to spend time together when they could. They had dinner with her son, his mother, and plenty of embarrassing stories were shared. Plenty of fond memories.
She’s even started sharing what had happened to her while he was gone. He made her feel safe, heard, and didn’t allow his guilt of not being there to encroach on her story. She needed to be held and he needed to hold her afterwards so they fell asleep on her couch because it would have been too intimate to do that in her bed.
So, yes, Elliot could make her happy. More than that, Elliot makes her feel loved. He isn’t just telling her; he’s showing her as well.
Despite all of that, there was still hesitation in both of them. His fear of rejection, her fear of failing.
“What if it doesn’t work out? I don’t want to cross that line only to lose him again.”
Amanda cocks her head to the side. “What if it does work out?”