Chapter Text
It’s April 4, 2006, a Tuesday, at roughly 9:27pm, when Elliot Stabler comes to the agonizing realization that he'd broken Rule #4 of his arrangement with Olivia Benson.
The whole thing had been her idea - and he had to admit, she made a pretty convincing pitch. Then again, when the most beautiful woman you’ve ever met propositions you, the laundry list of reasons to say no grows hazy pretty quickly after that.
She presented her plan a few months earlier on a rainy day in November – the type of bitter winter rain that stings your face and brings a heavy, looming darkness as an escort.
They met at Frank's Deli - a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop they frequented back when they were still partners, and frequent now as friends. People are packed in like sardines, and a haphazard maze of tables, chairs, and bodies zig-zag around a solitary grubby counter jammed into the epi-center. It's loud, and cramped, and buzzy, and perfect, not unlike the City itself.
Muddy shoe prints coated the laminate floor as Elliot trudged inside the Deli. His rain jacket and umbrella lost their battle with the wind, though the power balance never made it much of a fair fight. Raindrops dripped down the back of his neck and he shivered.
As he stamped his feet uselessly on the waterlogged mat, his socks squelched along the sides of his boots, evoking a buried memory of a grisly crime scene his first year working Homicide. The night of, Elliot's loafers squished as he stepped around the body of a gutted United Blood Nation snitch. Only when he clicked on his flashlight did he realize the poor son of a bitch’s entrails were spilling out onto the pavement beneath Elliot’s feet.
Elliot took another slippery step inside the Deli, shuddering, wanting nothing more in that moment than to crawl out of his own skin. If it had been anyone else, he would have murmured excuses about the towering stack of files on his desk or given his best rendition of a sickly cough and begged off the lunch date. Anything to avoid the bitter trek from the OCCB to the Deli, and the ensuing soggy wardrobe.
But Olivia was….well…
Olivia.
He would have squelched down all two hundred fourteen streets in Manhattan to see her.
Frank caught his eye and Elliot held up two gloved fingers, a wordless request for their usual; a pastrami on rye for him, a turkey club for her, a basket of fries to share. Frank gave him a two finger salute in acknowledgment.
The door behind him swung open. A gust of frigid air smacked Elliot in the back, and he kicked himself (again) for suggesting the Deli rather than a coffee shop or a pizzeria with those heat lamps stationed on either side of the doorway. He turned sideways to maneuver around tennis shoes, elbows, and table edges as he made his way to the back corner – their usual spot.
His recent undercover stint had interfered with their lunches for the last few months, and his desire to see Olivia risked devolving into desperation. She’d been his rock, his constant.
Kathy should have been his constant.
The complaint for absolute divorce sat unopened on his dresser, taunting him. He should have thrown it in the back of his bedroom closet, or shoved it into his nightstand, or buried it at the back of his sock drawer, but he thinks now part of him wanted the continuous reminder of his carelessness, his failure.
To torture himself with it.
The morning Kathy left, he rolled out of bed, yawning, tugged on his gym shorts, fastened his watch, brushed his teeth, knotted his shoelaces, started a pot of coffee, and caught the glint of gold on the counter. In her haste to leave, she’d blindly tossed it, and the band landed on top of Kathleen's November 2004 issue of Cosmopolitan. The symbol of the life they built together – encircling “55 Things You Can Learn about Him in 10 Minutes.”
A few things about Elliot Stabler:
Thing #1: In the fifteen minutes he spent that morning puttering around the bedroom, he never once noticed, or sensed, Kathy's absence.
Thing #2: After leaving him, Kathy started dating a Marketing Executive on the Upper West Side, who wears three piece suits and takes her to restaurants with one word names like Daniel or Oceana. She orders the oysters on the half shell and a bottle of Chianti, and takes him home to fuck him in their bed.
Thing #3: He hates oysters.
The familiar jingle of the Deli door brought him out of his reverie, and Olivia stumbled inside shaking her umbrella out on the mat and unzipping her puffy black coat. She caught his eye and her face lit up.
Olivia had always been effortlessly beautiful; ethereal, really, in a way that turned men into poets. Elliot never had a knack for the written word, but he was good with his hands, so he built a home in her. Her beauty was his hearth, and it warmed him as he watched her make her way to their corner table at the back.
“Hey.” Olivia eyed him carefully for a moment, before reaching up and slowly wrapping her arms around his shoulders, pressing her cheek against his in a comfortable embrace. As if this was natural for them; an everyday occurrence.
The first time he ever hugged her, right after her Mother died, she’d clung to him, tucking her arms beneath his shoulders and burying her face into the crook of his neck. He'd stood there, rubbing circles in her back with his palms because he didn't know what else to do for her. But this strong, stubborn, warrior of a woman needed him and that need activated something primal in his chest; a visceral thing that sprouted green.
As the tension slowly seeped out of her, she'd gone completely limp, Elliot's arms propping her up against his chest. His eyes on the wall clock, he'd watched the seconds tick by, neither of them capable of moving – as if they'd sprouted roots on the spot that tangled together hopelessly beneath the floor.
He has no recollection of who finally let go first, but she'd felt it too - a strange magnetic pull.
They avoided most physical contact after that, unless absolutely necessary. Doing otherwise was too much of a risk, a dice roll, the chance for the roots to take hold and permanently tether them together.
“What is this for?” He murmured into her neck. Because it wasn't absolutely necessary.
He felt the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth against his cheek. “You look like you really needed it.”
One long shaky exhale escaped him, and he realized he'd been holding his breath. It hit him all at once - the divorce papers, the miserable fucking weather, how much he needed her. Her familiarity, her comfort, her stability – but he had to let go. The sleeves of his shirt were soaked from her drenched coat, and he didn’t want to embarrass himself by clinging to her like a life preserver.
“Thank you,” he whispered. He pulled back slowly, the faint smell of her orange and lavender shampoo lingering in his nostrils, and she bumped her cheek once against his before untangling their arms to pull off her sopping wet coat.
Frank raised an arm. As Olivia draped her coat over the back of the chair, Frank handed off the food to Elliot. The fry box balanced precariously on top of Olivia's turkey club, and she chuckled and leaned forwards to snatch the fries before they toppled onto the head of a woman with a purple “I ❤ ️New York” baseball cap.
“One of these days we are going to lose that basket of fries,” she teased, placing it down carefully on the sticky table.
“Hasn't happened yet,” he slid into his chair, taking a giant bite of his pickle. Her lips shimmered as she reached for the ketchup bottle beside her. Why was she wearing lip gloss? Was that new? Was it one of those glosses with a taste?
Maybe cherry-flavored? Blueberry? She loved those blueberry muffins at the bakery around the corner from the 1-6. She’d take a bite, closing her eyes with a satisfied hum, and save the last bit of it for him, every single time.
Or coconut? He liked coconut.
“What, something on my face?” She raised an eyebrow at him, holding the ketchup bottle up mid-air.
He was staring.
Shit.
He cleared his throat and shook his head, finishing off the last of his pickle.
She shrugged, jiggling the ketchup bottle for a moment before turning it upside down and shaking it more aggressively. “No more undercover stints for awhile now, right?”
“Nope,” he sighed gratefully at her rapid change of subject. “Now I get to spend the next six months of my life with attorneys,” he grimaced.
She sniggered and squirted a large mound of ketchup into the fry basket.
“You mentioned a few months back you were finally getting a new partner. Transfer go through?”
“Yes.” Her curt response elicited a grin from Elliot, which only widened when she set the ketchup bottle down with a loud thump beside her.
“So, Cragen told you it was time to take down that shrine to me on my old desk, huh?”
She glared up at him, but there was no real heat behind it. “It wasn't a shrine,” she mumbled, a pink flush creeping up her cheeks as she busied herself wrestling her straw from its paper sheathe.
He should have wiped that cocky grin off his face and stopped being such a smug bastard, but a warm heat was spreading through his chest at the reminder of the place he held in her life, still held in her life, two years after they ended their partnership.
“What are we calling it, then?” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, savoring that heat and the smug satisfaction for just a little while longer.
The corners of her mouth twitched. “Fuck you,” Olivia flicked the straw wrapper at him from across the table. It tapped his forearm and fell into his lap.
He balled it into a tiny circle with his fingers, still grinning at her.
She'd been growing her hair out after years of what Kathleen called “pixie cuts.” The tips of her hair tickled the tops of her shoulders, golden highlights more prominent now against the natural rich brown. The angle perfectly framed her face and, fleetingly, he wondered how soft her hair would feel between his fingers.
He relented the teasing and tossed the rolled up paper wrapper into her sandwich basket. “So, I know he's not the best partner you've ever had,” – she rolled her eyes at that – “but. What do you think? Will he make it?”
“He might,” she said around a mouthful of food, “Lake’s from Brooklyn SVU. So, he hasn't needed much training at all. Got a handle on things pretty quickly.”
“Good thing, you guys have been down a body for a while now.”
“Yeah.” She swirled her tongue around inside her cheek. “It’s been” – she set her sandwich down - “you know, I never thought I would miss the obnoxious squeaking your chair made when you leaned back in it.”
She sounded wistful, and it caught him completely off guard, a lump forming in his throat. “But you used to give me so much shit…”
“I know, I know! But Lake does it now, too and it sounds wrong! Because it isn't your squeaking.” She furrowed her brow, and blinked a few times. “Is that…that's weird isn't it?”
He had no idea where all of this was coming from. A hug? Sentimentality? Who was this person sitting in front of him, and what had they done with his stoic ex-partner?
The lump in his throat grew into a boulder, and he turned his head towards the stained windowpane behind her, the wall of rain still coming down in a sheet from the sky.
It'd been two years, and that raw longing in his chest for the days they spent sharing salads and sentences still lingered like a bruise. There were days he wondered if he'd made the right choice, if they’d made the right choice, ending their partnership.
Instead of soggy socks and boots, he could have been warm and dry inside the 1-6, squeaking away, aggravating her to the point of snapping at him to “sit the fuck up in that chair” before she did it for him.
Elliot counted the raindrops gathered on the corner of the pane behind her head, desperately trying to swallow that boulder. The condensation was so thick, people on the sidewalk were all just shadowy figures merging in and out of frame.
Four, five, six.
“You talk to Kathy recently?” Olivia asked with a hushed trepidation, trying to course correct them.
Elliot shook his head. “She uh….she filed for divorce last week.”
He continued counting raindrops.
“Seems like this thing with Tom has been going well.” Bitterness dripped from his words.
Olivia reached across the table, resting her hand on top of his. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.
He met her eyes, tender and empathetic, and he wished, not for the first time, that he could bottle it. Her hand was warm and soft and he desperately wanted to rotate his wrist and thread his fingers through hers. Just for a moment.
“Is there anything I can do?” She added.
“Wake me up from this nightmare?” He laughed wryly. Olivia squeezed his hand tighter. She wasn't going to offer him platitudes or useless optimism as he stared down the failure of a decades long marriage.
“Well. At least misery loves company,” she offered quietly. “We uh…Brian and I…broke things off.”
“Again?” He blurted.
She glowered at him, and he instantly regretted it; in part because she'd wrenched her hand away, and God he wanted her to hold it for just a little while longer, but he wasn't the epitome of success in the relationship department, either.
“What did he do this time?” He sighed, trying to conceal his contempt. Her eyes narrowed, a tell-tale sign that he’d failed miserably.
Brian Cassidy spent the previous eighteen months sniffing around Olivia like a stray dog. Not too long after Elliot's transfer to the OCCB, she'd confessed they were giving it a go. Why they didn't give it a fucking go sooner was a mystery to him; Brian transferred to Narcotics the second year of Elliot and Olivia’s partnership. It certainly didn't explain Olivia’s attraction to the guy; he was a neanderthal of a cop.
And they had nothing in common.
She rubbed a hand across her face, and rested her cheek in the palm of her hand. “He's the one that broke it off for good, actually,” she muttered, fidgeting with the fry basket.
“Him?”
“He said I'm…’emotionally unavailable.’”
Elliot snorted. “That's the understatement of the century.”
Her head shot up, eyes flashing. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Elliot…”
“And it shouldn't matter! Because he isn't good enough for you!” That green visceral thing in his chest snarled, gnashing its teeth.
“No one ever is!”
“Yeah, well…!” His knuckles were white from the force of his grip on the edge of the table. He took a deep breath in through his nose, trying to tamp down the possessive ire that had him ready to beat his fists against his chest like a gorilla.
If he'd had a modicum of self-awareness then, maybe he could have admitted to himself that all of it was just pure unbridled jealousy.
She was still glaring at him.
“I think you deserve better. So shoot me.”
“Don't tempt me,” she growled.
“Why do you keep…”
A guy with bright red hair cut Elliot off, knocking into his elbow as he squeezed by their table with an armful of empty sandwich baskets. He mumbled an apology, and continued his shuffling through the maze of tables towards the trashcan by the door.
They lapsed into an awkward silence.
Olivia stared off to the left, no doubt to hide her eyes from him – so he couldn't read what she was feeling. He opened his mouth to just apologize so they could move on, when she blinked a few times, and swiveled back to face him abruptly. Her eyes simmered.
“Fine. Okay, you win. He is really good in bed.”
Elliot froze. “I…I didn't…you…”
“You wanted to know,” she quipped. “So, now you have your answer.”
“That's…” He'd nearly said that's none of my business but he'd been the one that started asking the question hadn't he? He swallowed roughly, his cheeks growing warm.
It wasn’t Olivia in bed with other men that agitated him. She dated frequently; but these were short term relationships, one night stands, men he occasionally overheard her complaining about to Fin or Munch while he’d had his nose buried in a file, pretending not to eavesdrop.
But the idea of some man, Cassidy or otherwise, having her undivided attention, fucking her exactly the way she longed for, being the single most important man of her life?
That was a different beast, entirely.
“What about you, Stabler?”
He watched her eyes ignite.
“You gotten laid, lately?”
She'd flipped him on his back, exposing his belly; a low blow, straight to the gut. The image of her straddling him, pinning his arms up above his head popped into his mind, and his cock stirred in his jeans.
His move.
He leaned on his forearms. “You offering, Benson?” Her eyes burned darker at the low, gravely tone in his voice, and it sent a tingle of electricity down his spine.
She squinted and licked her lips, reminiscent of a jungle cat stalking its prey. Olivia Benson salivating over him like a piece of meat was, admittedly, a massive turn-on.
But then the fight left her all at once, her shoulders deflating, her eyes softening. She raked her teeth over her lower lip, one of her tells – she was preparing to present some half-baked scheme.
“You know,” she looked to her left – as if to ensure there were no eavesdroppers, which was ridiculous, because he was confident no one could hear their murmured conversation over the hum of the Deli – and then back towards Elliot. She leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Maybe we could actually…help each other out.”
Elliot had made the mistake of taking another bite of his sandwich while she needlessly scanned the room, and he stopped mid-chew. The glint in her eyes suggested she was serious.
His sandwich turned into a wad of glue in his mouth. The rye bread balled itself around the pastrami and the Swiss cheese, only the rye bread was dry, the cheese stuck to the roof of his mouth, and panic rose in his throat at the thought that he might choke to death on a pastrami sandwich because Olivia Benson had just suggested that they fuck. Sleep together. Have sex. Screw. Bone.
Hook up.
He was so beside himself that it took another few seconds of struggling before he finally managed to push the lump of food into his throat, where it made a slow trek down his esophagus. He could swear he felt the moment it hit his stomach.
“What?” He rasped.
Oblivious to the sweat gathering on his forehead and his near death experience, Olivia leaned further forwards, her chest pressing on her forearms, her cleavage visible above the top of her white camisole.
“I said…we could. You know…” her voice dropped even lower, until he could barely hear it above the roar of blood rushing in his ears.
They could do a lot of things. They could jump off a cliff without a bungee cord. They could go skiing in the Alps without a helmet. They could quit their jobs and jet-set to Italy with no plan, that didn't make any of that a good idea.
“Olivia…” he huffed out a laugh that caught in his throat and strangled itself on its way out. “That is not a good idea.”
She drew back slightly, a small crease forming in her brow. If he didn't know any better, he would say she looked offended.
“Why not? We find each other attractive, right?”
It's a trap!
Elliot gulped, Admiral Ackbar’s voice bouncing around in his head like the ball in a pinball machine. Dickie watched Return of the Jedi at least twice a day the year he and Lizzie turned nine, and he and the kids used to snicker and fling the line back and forth as an inside joke at the dinner table or when he drove them to school.
Only Olivia wasn't joking.
He gaped at her. He knew he was gaping at her, but he couldn't find the muscles in his face to close his jaw.
Of course he found her attractive. Of course she found him attractive. He knew it. She knew it. They'd ogled each other in the lockers more times than he could count. He's confident if his parish priest had observed any of it, he’d be flicking holy water at them both.
But they don't acknowledge it.
Let alone advocate giving into it.
She had him, though. If he denied it, she would confront him on the lie. If he dodged it, she would lob it straight back. That left him with only one option.
He took a deep breath. “Of course we do, Liv. But we’re friends, we…”
“That’s sort of the idea,” her eyes twinkled mischievously. “It doesn't work if you aren't attracted to the person.”
She lifted her drink to her mouth, wrapped her pink lips around the straw, and sucked, maintaining eye contact. He stifled a groan, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
She smirked, her eyes wandering down to his mouth and back up again, watching his discomfort with amusement. He wanted to pin her up against a wall and put his hand over her mouth, wipe that shit eating grin off her face – but then his hips would be pressed up against hers and…
Our Father Who Art in Heaven…
“Elliot, relax,” she set her drink down. “It's just a friends with benefits arrangement. It's no big deal, I've done it before. Once in college, and once again a few years ago before I started dating Brian.”
That got his attention.
“Who was the guy?”
Her smirk deepened. “Do you want to hear the Four Rules or not?”
“Rules?”
“Mmm…” she hummed. “Well…boundaries,” she corrected. “Otherwise, it's not a friends with benefits arrangement, it's just dating.”
That was his moment to shut it all down. Politefully decline, say thanks but no thanks, put a cork in it, recite the long list of ways this could blow up in their faces.
But he'd already started rationalizing it. She'd done it twice before with success. They were good friends, they knew how to hold boundaries, and it had been a really, really long time since he’d had sex.
Of course, it would also be an opportunity to unlock that box of fantasies he'd stored deep down in his chest.
No strings attached.
In retrospect, images of Olivia’s sweat slicked body beneath his as she moaned his name were always going to prevail against logic.
In every universe.
“What are the Rules?”
Olivia looked exceedingly proud of herself and settled her forearms on the table. “Okay. Rule #1: no sleepovers.”
“So like… a fuck and run,” Elliot deadpanned.
“Uh-huh,” she clicked her tongue. “Uh-huh. He's got jokes,” she picked up a fry, wagged it at him, and then took a bite out of it. “Okay, Liz Phair. Yes, a fuck and run.”
“Do you buy me dinner first, too?”
“Are you done being a wise-ass? Can I keep going?”
He put his hands up in deference. She raised her eyebrow at him, waiting, and he grinned watching the battle of amusement and annoyance play out on her face. She finally settled on amusement, something resembling a flirtatious smile on her lips, and any remaining resistance to her idea evaporated.
She cleared her throat. “Rule #2,” she continued. “No dating. No flowers, gifts, making promises, talking about future plans, that sort of thing.”
Elliot nodded slowly. “Makes sense.”
“Rule #3,” she held up three fingers on her right hand. “No lovemaking.”
“No lovemaking…?”
“Rule #4…”
“Alright, alright, hold it.” Elliot whistled, making a t-shape with his hands and knocking them together. “Hold it there, Coach. You've lost me.”
She made a face. “Lost you on what?”
“No…lovemaking?” He repeated, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“What do you mean, what does that mean?”
“I mean…what is the definition…”
“Elliot, you have four kids and you don't…”
“We didn't sit down to have a conversation about…”
"I should not have to explain….”
“I mean you just sort of… stick it in there, don't you?”
Olivia groaned, dropping her head into her hands.
He kept going. “What if you…”
“Alright.” She threw her hand in the air, and peered up at him, her cheeks a faint shade of pink. “It means – no cuddling, no pet names or terms of endearment, no…intimacy.”
“Intimacy.” Elliot blew out a breath through his cheeks. If he thought too long about Olivia calling him ‘baby’ it would short circuit his brain, he was sure of it. “Olivia, sex is…about as intimate as it gets.”
“Sex is just sex, Elliot,” she shrugged, “a physical release. Intimacy is…you know…everything else.”
He paused, considering her words. His mind wandered back to the intimacy of their partnership, shoulders huddled over a stack of files at one in the morning, passing the same carton of lo mein back and forth from Wo Hop, those early mornings when he opened the door to the cribs to wake her after she’d gotten her four hours. He would watch the way her chest rose and fell, her arm flung across her abdomen, while the reds and golds of the sunrise streamed through the old cracked window above the door, painting a halo around the golden flecks in her hair.
There was an old saying in the NYPD that many cops were closer to their partners than their own spouses. He'd never given it much thought, never allowed himself to give it much thought. To acknowledge that he knew Olivia - her mannerisms, her quirks, every crease in her brow, better than he knew Kathy, would ever know Kathy, felt like a guilt-ridden admission.
A confession.
He reached across his chest to scratch his shoulder nervously. “So. What's Rule #4, then?”
She tucked a limp piece of hair behind her ear and started fiddling with the paper in the empty fry basket. “No falling in love.”
She said it solemnly, as if she were giving a eulogy at a funeral, not proposing some harebrained fuck and run arrangement between two friends. The sudden lack of eye contact and humorless shift in her tone unnerved him; an immediate Olivia Benson red flag that should have given him pause.
“What uh…” he cleared his throat, “What happens if you break the Rules?”
“You end the arrangement.”
“You fall in love and then…end the arrangement?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to determine if he was being a wise-ass again as she picked up her cup.
“No, Elliot, you end the arrangement when it's time to move on.” She rattled the ice around. “If you don't break the first three Rules, you don't break the fourth one.” She sipped the rest of her Coke, and set it on the table. “It’s simple.”
Except it wasn’t simple, it was a minefield; a minefield hidden beneath a siren’s song. Olivia Benson was serving him up one of his deepest desires on a silver platter.
Anything that sounds too good to be true always is.
But the rational part of him had already been silenced, overridden, by the part of him that wanted her, had desperately wanted her, for years.
“Alright,” he sighed, rubbing his palms across his jeans as she started stacking their empty sandwich baskets on top of each other. “Alright.”
She grinned, her beautiful brown eyes dancing playfully, and he wonders, now, if even one thing that day had been different, would the sane part of him have shut it all down?
If Kathy hadn’t filed for divorce the week prior, if that ache in his chest had been a little lighter, would he have said no?
If Olivia hadn’t been uncharacteristically tender; if she hadn’t hugged him, or held his hand, would he have felt less greedy, less eager for more of it?
If his socks and his sleeves hadn’t been cold and soggy, if they’d been sitting inside a pizzeria by those heat lamps, rather than a drafty old Deli, would the longing, the pull, for her warmth and her solace have been easier to resist?
Or would it have happened anyway? Maybe it was an inevitability; a foregone conclusion.
Fate.
Maybe she was always meant to go into that bus terminal.
Maybe he was always meant to love her.