Chapter Text
Elliot took another sip of his lukewarm beer and, as best he could through the dim light of the dingy bar, he studied his new partner out of the corner of his eye.
She’d been his rookie for a little over a week, and while she wasn’t unfriendly, she was extremely reserved, to the point he’d begun to worry.
He hadn’t expected them to be best friends straight out of the gate, but he had expected some kind of effort from her to get to know one another, leading to some form of camaraderie eventually growing between them.
But so far, she’d given him nothing.
She could bust balls with the best of them when it came to perps, and she was almost preternaturally in-tuned to what their vics needed, but when it came to the squad, especially him, she kept herself separate, not completely closed off, but only a conversation or two shy of it.
Every day since Cragen had introduced them, he became more and more afraid that she wouldn’t be able to cut it, afraid the work they did would wear her down within a year if she couldn’t learn how to take the licks of the job, and then unload it and let it go with her squad, with him.
And he didn’t want to lose her.
Because by the third day he’d known, down to his bones, she was the best he’d ever worked with. Without question. Without a single doubt.
And he couldn’t lose her.
So with a promise of drinks on him, he’d invited everyone to McGregor’s after work with the intention of getting them all loose, and hopefully, the free flowing beer and out of office conversation would help Benson get in a place where she was comfortable and willing to get to know her new coworkers.
He wanted that for her, and them.
But more importantly, he wanted to crack that goddamned iron reserve wide open and see what her seemingly unbreakable shell protected.
Elliot watched as she tucked a hank of dark hair behind her ear, and he sighed.
They’d been at the bar for an hour and Benson had spoken to him twice, both times to answer when he’d asked what she wanted to drink.
Briscoe, Munch, and Jeffries hadn’t fared much better with her.
Again, she wasn’t unfriendly, not at all. She smiled, she nodded, she spoke when spoken to, but she didn’t carry conversations any further, and she certainly didn’t start them.
And he’d never heard her laugh, and for some reason he refused to analyze, that bothered him more than anything.
For the most part, she sat quietly, drinking her beer and constantly assessing the crowd around them as she worried her thumb over her index finger, repeatedly, from tip to knuckle and back again.
“Where you going?” Munch cut into his study of her with a louder than necessary call to Briscoe, a Briscoe who was, at most, two foot from the table.
The younger detective glanced over his shoulder, answering just as loudly as Munch had asked, “To play something we can dance to.”
Jeffries snorted into her whiskey. “People don’t dance in a cop bar, Briscoe.”
Briscoe turned fully to the table, parking his hands on his narrow hips and lifting both brows. “Maybe they would if somebody played something other than Creedence and Bob Seger.”
Munch lifted his beer in a toast-like gesture, like Seger himself was standing in front of him waiting on a defense. “You can absolutely dance to Seger.”
Briscoe’s head ticked to the side incredulously, brows reaching for his hairline as he muttered, “But who would want to?”
A ghost of a grin tipped up Benson’s lips as Jeffries choked back a laugh and Munch slowly lowered his glass.
Then, like he was disgusted beyond anything they’d ever seen on the job, Munch threw out his drink-less hand toward the jukebox, ordering Briscoe, “Get outta my sight, man.”
Briscoe took off and Munch turned back to the table, grumbling under his breath, “Can’t dance to Seger. Betty Lou’s Gettin’ Out Tonight? Old Time Rock And Roll? Somebody needs to put the fear of Bob in that kid.”
Eventually, he trailed off, and they all went back to their drinks as a comfortable quiet fell over their table, a comfortable quiet that was broken when a familiar whispered beginning floated out of the jukebox speakers.
Sweet Christ.
The idiot was playing ‘Sexual Healing’ in a cop bar.
“Really, Briscoe?” Jeffries yelled, steadying her feet on the bottom rung of her stool and standing, screaming to be heard over Marvin Gaye’s smooth voice and a wave of disgruntled mumbling rolling across the patrons between their table and Briscoe, “Really?”
Benson’s eyes, filled with a laughter he wished he could hear, darted to his and Elliot smiled.
“He’s never gonna live this down.” Munch murmured, jutting his chin to a table across from them. “Look at that table of cowboys.”
Elliot twisted around, instantly clocking the table of narcotics boys cutting their eyes Briscoe’s way, and he quickly twisted back to see that Briscoe apparently didn’t give a damn, if the awkward, stuttering sway of his body and the goofy grin he was aiming their way was anything to go by.
“We can’t leave him swinging in the breeze.” Munch muttered before sliding off his stool and sucking back a healthy gulp of his beer.
“He left himself swinging in the breeze.” Jeffries pointed out with a tip of her glass towards Briscoe.
Munch, again, threw out his drink-less hand in the direction of the jukebox. “Look at him, Jeffries.”
He was making a fucking fool of himself, not that Briscoe cared, but surprising the hell out of Elliot, Jeffries did. Because with one long look, she belted back the rest of her whiskey, slammed the glass on the table, shimmied her shoulders when Elliot was sure the heat hit her gut, and got up to follow Munch.
And right there, with Briscoe’s stupidity, Elliot had the perfect team building exercise laid out before him.
They could all be humiliated in front of half the precincts in the city together, nothing built team like that.
He slid off his own stool and circled the table, offering a hand to Olivia. “Come on.”
She smiled, another faint tip up of her lips. “I’m good.”
“Could be better.” He smiled, a real one, not a half-assed mask of manners, and kept his hand held out for her, a hand he dropped when Olivia’s gaze shifted back to the bar.
“Look,” he started, taking a step closer to her and getting her dark eyes back on him, “this job- I know it gets heavy, but you’re still allowed to have fun, have a life.”
She lifted a single brow, and with that small show of real emotion, Elliot felt a knot loosen in his gut, one he hadn’t even realized had been tightening there. “I date.” She countered firmly, an edge of anger lacing those two words, and that unknown knot slipped free completely.
Taking a stab in the dark, and going off of one week of studying her and pure gut instinct, he reasoned quietly, gently, “Sex isn’t a life, Benson.”
Her head jerked back at that, stubborn chin dipping down toward her neck, before she leaned closer and clipped out, “What’s a life then, Stabler?”
He tilted his head to the tiny space of floor in front of the jukebox where their squad was dancing- Briscoe swinging an arm in the air like he was twirling a lasso, Jeffries with both arms raised, swaying them side to side with the rock of her hips, and Munch attempting a very stilted, very offbeat moonwalk.
“That.” He said simply, watching her eyes and the flash of want sparking there as she kept them trained on their crew.
“It’s been a rough week.” She whispered after a beat, her gaze never leaving the half-drunk train wreck across the bar.
“The first one always is,” he reassured softly, “but they’ll come easier.”
She nodded, but didn’t say another word, and as they sank into silence, Elliot’s teeth ground together with the need to push her, shake her, do anything he could to get through to her, do anything he could to make sure she wouldn’t leave them, leave him.
A house crumbled without a solid foundation, and she needed to know that she could have that.
He could be that for her.
If she’d just let him.
It wasn’t for everybody, and she might end up leaving anyway, regardless of what he could give her in their partnership, but from what he’d seen, she desperately wanted to be here, and he desperately wanted her with him as long as she wanted to be.
He didn’t question it, wasn’t about to dig down deep and unearth his instinctual response to her. He just knew there was something there, some sliver of symmetry he’d never experienced with another partner, and he’d like to know where that could lead them.
Resting an elbow on the table, he bent to her, closer than he’d ever been, close enough to see a tiny freckle at the corner of her eye, close enough to hear the soft inhale she sucked in at his proximity, close enough to draw her attention back to him, close enough to smell the fading scent of fabric softener and the beer on her breath, and laid it out, “If you’re gonna make it in SVU, and I know you want that, you’ve gotta learn to talk to me. I’m your partner, and I’d like to be your partner for a good long while.”
Her gaze drifted back out to the bar, slowly scanning their surroundings, before her throat rippled with a hard swallow, and rippled again with the hushed confession that followed it, “My mother was raped.”
His body swayed back with the force of that blow, and though he quickly steadied himself with a hand to the table, he couldn’t stop the harsh breath that accompanied that gut punch, or the low, tortured murmur of her name, “Benson.”
She tried for a shrug, the stiff, tight line of her shoulders barely rising. “That’s how I came to be here.”
“In this unit.” He murmured, nodding because he understood that. He’d been drawn by the driving need to protect the children, she’d been drawn to protect women like her mother.
Her eyes found his, held his, and he watched as the reserve melted clean away and an indescribable pain floated to the surface, moving over her features, weighing down her whispered words, “In the world.”
“Olivia.” He breathed, almost entirely soundless against the background of the bar, that indescribable pain, her pain, echoing in his chest, shredding his lungs and squeezing at his heart.
At his whisper, her brows dipped low, a deep groove forming between them, like she couldn’t believe she’d said what she said, like she couldn’t believe that unwavering guard that shrouded her hadn’t held the heartbreaking truth back.
And Elliot finally understood. Why she was so eager to go toe to toe with perps, why she was so effortlessly adept at dealing with vics, why she held herself apart from anything not centered around the work.
It wasn’t just a job for her, it was a mission, one she’d been burdened with the minute she had breathed her first breath.
He couldn’t be sure, but he could imagine, solely from what he’d observed in their short time together, that her childhood had not been a happy one.
Maybe her entire life hadn’t been a happy one, and he understood that too, what it was like to never be truly free of the blood that ran through your veins, of the hurts you’d never perpetrated but would forever be punished for.
And in that moment, he wondered if Olivia Benson had ever had a real friend, a true foundation of any kind. And in the very next moment, he decided, whether she wanted it or not, he was going to knock himself out to give it to her.
Grasping her wrist, he tugged her off her stool, muttering as he pulled her, unresistingly, across the bar, “Come on, partner. Songs almost over. Lemme teach you how to have a life.”
“You can dance?” She asked, a touch more than a whisper of a smile in her voice.
“I have four kids.”
She stopped abruptly, forcing him to turn or lose his hold on her, and when he did, that single dark brow rose. “What’s that have to do with it?”
Lifting his own brows, he circled his hips a few times, ending with a thrust that had her smiling a wide, genuine smile, all pretty white teeth and gorgeous curving lips.
It wasn’t a laugh, but it was a start.
He bent to her, questioning quietly, “You following me?”
Her smile went wider, brighter. “I’m following you, Elliot.”
He grinned at her soft murmur of his name, the first time she’d ever said it, and sliding his hand down further, he curled his fingers around hers and started them moving again.
And surprisingly, without any work from him, the first laugh came when they were met by a ridiculous round of drunken applause as they finally made it to their crew.
The second, when Elliot had wrapped an arm around her lower back and dipped her, to another wave of cheers.
The third, when the song faded out, and instantly started again.
The fourth, when Briscoe had shouted, “I played it five times!” Then, lifting both hands, he smacked them against Jeffries’ already raised hands, adding, “In a row!”
The fifth, when Elliot had circled an arm around her chest and jerked her out of the way of Munch’s windmilling arms.
The sixth, on replay three, when she’d rolled up her sleeves and patiently, with a perpetual cheek aching smile, taught Munch how to moonwalk.
The seventh, when she’d caught Elliot’s eyes over Briscoe’s erratically bobbing head.
The eighth, when he’d brought back another round of drinks and Jeffries automatically clinked her glass to the neck of Benson’s beer.
The ninth, when Seger’s rasp came over the speakers and Munch pulled Briscoe to him for a sloppy, smacking kiss to the cheek.
And he considered it a damn fine start to their partnership when, by the end of the night, he’d lost count of how many times he’d heard Olivia Benson laugh.