Chapter Text
Olivia sits at the bar, nursing a glass of Scotch, alone.
Noah is at a sleepover. It is on those particular nights that she caves, sometimes. The apartment is so quiet when he’s away. It is not fear that drives her out of her home; it is the vastness of her loneliness. On those nights, it catches up with her. In the darkness and quiet of her empty apartment, she realizes that she has nobody, not truly. So she drinks, hoping it will soothe the ache.
Occasionally she wonders who she would want to come home to. Rafael? Would she allow him to love her if he ever came back? Probably not. She had that chance. She knew how he felt about her and didn’t know what to do with it, so she allowed it to fester until he moved on and walked away like she had always known he would. She blew it with Alex, too, although she thinks if she really gave her the chance, Alex Cabot would come back to her. She remembers that night, the drizzle coming down around them, her fingers tangled in long, blonde hair, Alex’s glasses fogging up a little as they kissed. It was a confession, a quiet one, but it was goodbye, too. Alex had different dreams now, and Olivia had no place in those dreams, not anymore.
A part of her wants Ed on her couch. Olivia thinks she could’ve been really happy with him. He loved Noah, and he adored her, and years ago, when he saw her at her worst, it didn’t scare him away. She clings onto the memories of Paris, of when things were good, when she was happy, when she allowed herself to be happy, before her happiness collapsed around her, along with all the hope she had of a better life.
Ed is gone. Ed ate his gun, and a part of her understands why, but a larger part of her is furious at him for leaving her behind. Everybody leaves her behind, and Olivia stays, unmoving, like a tree rooted at the steps of the NYPD, because no matter how often she wonders how much longer she can do this, she’ll always pick up when the phone rings.
Elliot, then? Maybe. But Elliot left her, too. He’s back, now, maybe for good, but no matter how hard she tries, she cannot find it in herself to forgive him for leaving. At least the others had the courtesy to tell her - Rafael, out on the steps of the courthouse, Alex, under the lamplight of the parking lot, Amanda, in that motel room, when Olivia thought the night would end very differently than it did - but not Elliot. Elliot just… disappeared.
“Is this seat taken?” She knows who it is before she looks up. The familiarity of his voice makes her stomach tighten. She meets Elliot’s blue eyes, and god-damnit, she can already feel her resolve to stay angry at him fraying at the edges.
“If I say yes, will you leave me alone?”
Elliot sits down anyway. “Probably not.” He doesn’t order anything.
“Did you follow me here?” She shoots him an angry glare. She hopes it’ll make him leave; it doesn’t. She downs the last bit of her drink and orders another one. Maybe a little company alongside her misery isn’t a bad thing.
“I happened to be in the neighbourhood.”
“Sure.” Olivia looks away, finds a spot on the wall - it’s a stain, she realizes, beer maybe? She wonders how it got there - and stares at it.
“Alright, Finn called me. He’s worried about you. Said you left in a hurry and that you seemed…”
“Seemed what, Elliot?” Olivia scoffs. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“He didn’t say that.”
“No, you did.” He didn’t, not really, but she’d rather fight someone than drown in her own self-pity.
“Do you want me to go?”
No. Yes. Maybe. Probably. It would be better if he left. It would keep her from doing something she might regret. “Would you leave if I did?”
“Maybe.”
Liar.
The silence stretches between them. It is something thick and heavy, almost tangible. She waits for him to say something. Just say something, anything. Anything that would make up for the decade she lost with him.
Who is she kidding, though? Nothing he could say would ever make up for that.
Olivia supposes it is less about how long he was gone, and more about everything else. His sudden departure - she had to find out from Cragen, not Elliot himself - and his complete disappearance from her life. She remembers sitting by her phone, waiting for a call. She certainly expected him to show up after Lewis, when her face was splattered across every front page in New York: New York City detective kidnapped by rapist and serial killer William Lewis, and SVU detective Olivia Benson accused of police brutality and murder. Surely he must have seen them.
Normally she would push all of the anger down, but tonight, she can feel it surfacing. She’s had a long day. Perhaps this is what she needs, more than the alcohol. She always did believe anger was easier to deal with than sadness. Fight me, she thinks. Tell me you hate me or tell me you love me and fucking do something about it.
“Why are you here, Elliot?” She looks at him. If he can see the fury in her eyes, he doesn’t mention it.
“Like I said-”
“I’m going to stop you right there.” She says frustratedly. “I know Finn didn’t call you. He wouldn’t call you, because he minds his own business.” She doesn’t know that for certain, not really, but she calls his bluff anyway and she can see in his eyes that she’s right. “The only person who might be nosy enough to call you is Amanda, and she knows better than to interfere with my life like that.” Just book a hotel room, she had said that day in her office, something mischievous in her eyes, get it out of your system. Maybe it would fix their issues, Olivia now thinks. Back then, she had believed it to be stupid, because it wasn’t like that, they weren’t like that, but the more time passes, the more she wonders if things would be easier between them if they did get it out of their systems. Kathy is dead; there’s nothing standing in their way anymore. Except she herself, it seems. She can almost hear Serena’s voice scolding her for it: you wouldn’t know what true happiness looked like if it stared you right in the face. “You’ve been sitting here for ten minutes, you haven’t ordered anything, you keep staring at me. So, so what? If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
“I just…” He seems to be contemplating his next words. Seems more careful, now, more guarded. Good, she thinks. “I wanted to see you.”
“And you just so happened to bump into me?” She laughs at the very idea of it. This idea that he can just drive to a New York City bar to see her, is funny, because for ten years she didn’t have that. “Isn’t that a luxury?”
“Liv, I didn’t mean-”
“Sure you didn’t.” She waves to the bartender and grabs her wallet from her purse. She throws a few dollar bills on the bar, mumbles “keep the change”, to the woman manning the bar - who, on another, better night, she might have gone home with - and gets up.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.” She needs to get out of here. The whole bar feels too crowded, suddenly, in a suffocating kind of way.
“You’re not driving, are you?”
“What did you just say?” Olivia scoffs. He does sound genuinely worried, she’ll give him that. “So what if I were? You’re not my mother.”
“Let me drive you home. You’ve been drinking-”
He’s probably right about the driving. She’s not drunk, but she wouldn’t call herself sober either. Regardless. She won’t give him that satisfaction. “I’ll call a cab.” She interrupts him as she turns around. “Just leave me be, Elliot.” It comes out smaller than she means it. She walks away from him. If he calls after her, she doesn’t hear it over the noise of the crowd. She almost looks back when she gets to the door, contemplates it, but she decides against it, afraid that if she looks back now her resolve will falter and she’ll run back to him, collapse into his arms and let him take her home.
~
When she finally gets home, she’s still angry. She feels it simmering in her blood.
(Perhaps that is the alcohol, though.)
It is better than to be lonely, though with him gone she has no one to take it out on, so she half contemplates calling him just so she can yell at him when someone knocks on her door. She glances at her phone: 11:34, almost midnight. Something very close to fear claws at her throat. She makes her way to her door. She takes her gun from the counter and holds it close just in case, but she drops it when she glances through the peekhole and sees who it is. “Elliot?” She puts the gun on a cupboard next to the door. She almost doesn't let him in. But he's here now, and isn't this the fight she was looking for? She opens the door for him. “So you really are following me.”
“What was that about?” Elliot says. She can hear the anger in his voice. She almost smiles to herself.
“Nothing. Just let it go.”
“Let it go?” He steps inside, even though she didn’t invite him in. He’s close to her now. It’s too close. She steps away from him. “Where’s Noah?”
“Away.” Is the only explanation she offers him.
“How many apologies do you need before you can forgive me?”
Truth is, she might never forgive him. Every time she’s close to that she thinks of Lewis, of how the worst thing imaginable happened to her and Elliot wasn’t there, and she finds herself right back where she started. “However many it takes.” She says as she walks into her living room. A better woman might have sent him home, saved this conversation for a moment when she’s more clearheaded, but she’s not that woman.
“Nothing I can say will change what has already happened.”
He’s right about that. She hates that she has nothing to say to it. “You know that in all the time you’ve been back, you’ve never asked about what happened to me while you were gone?” She says instead.
“Would you have told me?”
It catches her off guard. “What?”
“If I had asked, would you have told me?” Elliot gets closer to her. She steps away again. “Trust me, I want to know everything that happened while I was gone. But I know you well enough to know that if I had asked, you wouldn't have told me.” He stares at her. Those blue eyes seem to see right through her. In a way, they do. “Alright. I’m asking, now. What happened to you while I was gone?”
She ignores his accusation, ignores the fact that he’s right.
He doesn’t really know what everything is. He doesn’t know about Ed, about the love they shared, doesn’t know about Brian, who she might not have loved but who fucked her better than most of her exes, doesn’t know about the ugly things that happened to her, about the burn-scars on her chest and the man who made them, about how she beat him bloody, close to death, how he made her put a gun to her own head and got her to pull the trigger, or about the moment he shot himself and a part of her wished the bullet had pierced through her skull instead. She can’t decide which part would break him more. So maybe he’s right: she wouldn’t have told him if he had asked, because he doesn’t know what he’s asking for, and he would never look at her the same way again.
But they're here now. She’s dragged it out of him. She’s gotten him to say what she wanted to hear. Now what? How much longer can she keep pretending like nothing happened? She wonders if he already knows. If he’s googled her name and read the articles, the way Noah did, and if he’s just refusing to bring it up because he wants to give her space. It would be something he’d do.
She opens her mouth to say something, but no words come out. What could she possibly say? Everything feels too vast to put into words.
An idea crosses her mind. Just show him. Olivia thinks about it. It’s a mean, dark thing to do, to confront him with the physical evidence of what was done to her in his absence. She knows him, knows it’ll make him feel guilty. Is that what she wants? It’s the least he deserves, the cruel, more selfish part of her whispers. “Alright. We’re both adults here.”
She feels too sober, suddenly. Her hands tremble when they move to the button of her blouse. She keeps her eyes on him, so he knows the severity of what she’s about to show him, so no part of him can think she might be hitting on him. She almost doesn’t go through with it. What if this changes how he sees her? She’s not his partner anymore, but she’s always believed Elliot needed to see her as brave and infallible.
Though maybe she wanted him to see her that way, so he wouldn’t see her as vulnerable. He wasn’t there when Lewis took her. He didn’t look at her with pity in his eyes the way the rest of her squad did when she came back. He didn't see the way everybody around her shrunk back in her wake, the guilt on their faces, their belief that Lewis had raped her.
It had been so important to her back then - still is - for people to know that he didn’t, that he couldn’t. What if Elliot doesn’t believe her?
Her hands are still trembling when she gets to the final button. She’s only wearing a bra underneath her shirt, so he can see it, the horror of it. “You wanted to know?” She shrugs off her blouse and lets it tumble to the floor. There’s an accusatory edge to her voice. “Here you go.”
~
Elliot doesn’t really know why he followed out of the bar. He should have done the smart thing and walked away, and this whole night would have just become another thing they don’t talk about, but he’s tired of pretending. Pretending like he doesn’t care, pretending like it doesn’t tear him apart to see the sadness in her eyes and know that he’s at least partly to blame for it. So he drives to her building and sits in the parking lot and before he can decide against it, he’s making his way up to her apartment.
Olivia is in front of him now, with an anger in her eyes that he hasn’t seen from her before. It’s like she’s been hiding it all this time and it’s finally boiling over. Give it to me, he wants to tell her. Give me all your anger and let me carry it for you.
The truth is, he doesn’t know what he’s asking for. He’s spoken to Finn enough to know that something happened, but Olivia hasn’t told him and he decided long ago that he wouldn’t force her. He could’ve looked up the files. It’s probably in their systems somewhere, or maybe even on the internet. He doesn’t know the extent of it, or how far it spread. Maybe one Google-search could have told him. But he never searched for it. It felt like a violation of her privacy. It’s her life, her story. He won’t be the one to take that away. The world has already taken so much from her.
Elliot can see her hands are shaking when she starts to take off her blouse. He wants to take them in his own, to kiss her knuckles and tell her that everything is going to be okay, but he’s frozen beneath her gaze. This is it. Whatever she’s about to show him, this is the one thing they cannot come back from.
He sees it. The light in the living room is dim, but he sees it. Cigarette burns, a key-shaped burn above her breast, and something that looks like it might have been a coat-hanger burned into the skin of her stomach. There are so many of them and they’re so scattered. His throat tightens. He can’t breathe. He wants to hug her, or fall to his knees and beg for her forgiveness, but nothing feels right.
He steps towards her. She backs away.
“Who-”
“Oh, come on. Are you going to tell me you don’t know?”
He nods, slowly, tearing his eyes away from her chest to meet her gaze. Olivia looks angry, but there’s something else underneath it, something softer and quieter.
“I don’t want to talk about him.” She replies.
That’s fair. “Did he-”
“No.” She snaps at him. He isn’t sure if he believes her. Would she tell him if he did?
“Is he dead?”
“Yes.” Olivia says, her voice stoic.
“Did you kill him?” He isn’t sure what he wants the answer to be.
She doesn’t answer right away. “No.” She eventually says. “He shot himself.”
He’s both relieved and disappointed. Relieved, because at least if the bastard shot himself Olivia doesn’t have to live with the blood on her hands, but disappointed, because dying by your own choice seems like an easy way to go. “Olivia…” his voice sounds heavy.
“Are you seriously saying that you never knew? Didn’t Google, didn’t read a paper?”
“I wasn’t in New York when…” his voice trails off. “I wanted you to tell me yourself. I didn’t want to take that away from you.”
“You wanted me to tell you myself.” She repeats. She laughs, bitterly. “You want to hear the rest, too?” She walks closer to him, and it’s his turn to back away now, away from the heat of her fury. “You wanna hear about how I cuffed him to a bed, picked up a metal bar and beat him to a pulp with it? About how I sent away the only people who showed up at that godforsaken beach-house because I wanted him alone?”
“Olivia, stop.”
But she’s not done. His back hits the wall. She gets in his face. “I talked about you to him, you know? I told him you’d know what to do with him.” He’s not sure what to say to that. She doesn’t give him a chance to reply. “You would have, wouldn’t you? You would have picked up that bar and killed him with it. You wouldn’t have been the coward I was and left him alive.”
“Don’t do that.” He hears himself say, instinctively. “But yes.” His voice is low. “I would have made sure he suffered before he died.”
“Too bad you weren’t there.”
That’s what it will always come back to, isn’t it? “If I had known, I would have come.” He hopes she believes him. “If I had known, I would have been there.” When he meets her gaze, he finds her dark eyes behind a sheen of tears. “I’m so sorry.” His hand reaches up to touch her. He gives her a chance to pull away. She doesn’t. He wants to comfort her. To wrap her in his embrace and whisper into her hair that things will be different from now on, that he will be different from now on, so her anger will fall away to reveal the heartache that she’s really trying to hide, but he knows her well enough to know that she won’t let him comfort her. He cups her cheek, touches her face in reverence, in regret. She leans into his touch. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Yes.” She answers. She doesn’t step away from him. “No.”
“I’m sorry.” He repeats. A better man would have something else to say, something better, but he can’t think of any words that could possibly encapsulate the depth of his regret.
“Four days.” She whispers. “It took them…” her voice breaks, “four days to find me. And the whole time I kept thinking that you would have found me in under two.”
Elliot doesn’t deny it. “Give it to me.” He says. “Everything. Your pain, your anger. Let me carry it.”
“I don’t-” Olivia looks away from him.
He can tell it’s not what she was expecting; knows she hoped he’d fight her on it. Perhaps Olivia is in front of him, in his space, so he’ll snap at her and she has a reason to yell back at him, but he’s not going to give her that. He’s too tired to fight her on it. They’re not thirty anymore; back when they screamed at each other in the middle of the precinct because that was the closest they could get to acknowledging this thing between them without truly acknowledging it. They’re not those people anymore. They’re older now, less hopeful, more sceptical. Kathy’s dead. The only thing in their way now is their own mistakes. “I can take it.”
She seems to consider it. “I hated you.” She whispers. “Back then.”
He knows. “I understand.”
“You didn’t even call. I wasn’t sure if you didn’t know or just didn’t care but either way I-” she grabs his wrist and forces his hand away from her face. “I hated you.”
Her eyes darken. The sadness is hidden away again, back behind the mask of rage. “I know.” For a moment, he thinks she might hit him. Elliot hopes she does; in a twisted, self-deprecating kind of way, he believes he deserves it. “Do something about it.” He grumbles, darkly. It’s a dare. He’s daring her to take this further.
It’s Olivia who makes the first move.
It’s always been important to him, that if this were ever to happen, it would be her choice. She doesn’t so much lean in as draws him towards her, their lips coming together in a conflation of anger and desire. He tries to lean against her but she forces him back against the wall, her mouth warm and wet against his, the faint taste of Scotch on her lips. He opens his mouth for her when her tongue presses against his teeth. He can taste the venom on her tongue.
He kisses her like a man starved; in a way, he is. For so long, Olivia has denied them this. He recalls the night in her kitchen, his lips against her jaw, so close yet so far away from her. We can’t, she had said, what if it doesn’t work out? He wonders what has changed. Maybe she no longer cares. Maybe she does care, but she wants to take something for herself for once, wants to rip something from the claws of the universe that has been against her since before she was born.
He might have asked her about it, but he’s afraid to speak; afraid it will shatter the moment and she’ll change her mind. He wonders if he’s dreaming, if this is just another one of his fantasies, like he’s had for over twenty years. So the next second, he kisses her a little harder, a little rougher, until he feels more than hears her whimper against his lips, if only to prove to himself that this is not an illusion, that it’s really happening, that Olivia is really kissing him and it’s not his imagination playing tricks on him.
When he pulls away gasping for air Olivia catches his lip between her teeth. She pulls away, staring at him. He runs his fingers down her shoulders, her muscles still taut. “I can feel you’re holding back.” Maybe she’s expecting him to turn her away? “Stop holding back.”
“What if this doesn’t-”
“Ssh..” He whispers, his lips ghosting over hers. “You think too much.”
“This will change everything.” She says, probably more to herself than to him.
“Do you want things to stay the way they are?”
“Maybe.” She pauses. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
“You won’t.” His lips catch on hers as he speaks. “Let go. Be rough. Be angry. Get out of your head.”
Olivia stares at him, pupils blown, and on her next inhale, she drags him back down to her. Elliot is not sure why that is the thing that drags her under, but as she kisses him, she sinks her teeth into his lip until he whimpers, and he tastes metal. She pulls away, grinning at him, her teeth red.
God, he loves her so much.
Elliot lets her drag him to the couch, his lips glued to hers. He’s not completely at her mercy; if this is the only time Olivia will let them indulge, he’ll make the most of it. In all the times he’s ever imagined this - and he’s done so plenty, both during and after his marriage, alone under the cold spray of his shower - their first time was never like this. He liked to imagine himself to be more of a romantic, imagined cooking for her and taking her to bed, picking her apart slowly. But he supposes things don’t always go according to plan, and anyway, soft and romantic has never been their style, has it? There’s always been something rough and explosive about the way they handle each other.
Olivia pushes him down and climbs in his lap. He stares at her - he’s gawking, honestly - allowing himself to have this. To take her in like this. Minutes earlier when she took off her shirt it was something dark and clinical, the way she forced him to look at her without looking at her, only allowing him to see the ugly things that had been done to her. But now, he sees her. Sees her looking down at him, messy hair and smudged lipstick, her chest heaving as she breathes, her breasts threatening to spill out of her bra.
As she starts to unbutton his shirt Elliot sits up, pressing his lips to her neck with all the intentions to mark her as his, but she pushes him away. He looks at her confused, but instead of explaining herself she tears off his shirt and pushes him back down on the couch. Her lips find his collarbone and she sucks a mark into it, and there’s something so magnificently possessive about it that it makes all of his blood rush south.
~
Olivia doesn’t know what comes over her. Out of the two of them, Elliot is the possessive one, but she can see the lust in his eyes when he stares at her chest and she can still taste his blood on the back of her teeth, and she just cannot help herself. She sucks a bruise into his neck. While she’s leaning down his fingers find the clasp of her bra. She lets him take it off.
“Jesus, Liv.” He grumbles, his voice tight and low.
She sits back up. “You’re gawking.”
His lips find her breast. She wants to tell him no, it’s my turn, but the feeling of her nipple in his warm mouth makes the thought slip from her mind. She can feel him hard beneath her.
I did that.
She imagines it, the size of him. She’s always believed that if it ever came to this, he’d be towering over her as he stretched her open. She did always imagine their first time in bed, but she’s afraid that if she tries to take him to her bedroom now, she might change her mind on her way there. So this is not the same by a long shot, but it’s just as good.
He releases her nipple from his mouth and moves to the other one.
Next time - or, maybe not next time, maybe later tonight - she’s going to lay down pliantly while he puts his mouth on her. She imagines how skilled he must be with his tongue, how good he’d want to make her feel, and she craves that almost as much as she craves the feeling of him thick and heavy inside of her, but she doesn’t want to be slow and gentle right now. She has no space for that. She cradles the back of his head and pushes him off her.
He stares at her, his gaze filled with longing and adoration. She wants to stay frozen in this moment forever, if only so he’ll never leave again.
Please, don’t leave me again.
Olivia stares at him, enjoying the view for a moment, staring at the muscles of his chest and the hairs that cover his nipples and run down his stomach to his groin. “Take off your clothes.” She says, her voice low and raspy.
He does. He kicks off his shoes and socks and starts working on his pants while she stands up, catching her breath. She needs a moment to rearrange her thoughts, because Elliot is naked on her couch and this is really happening, this thing that will either solidify them as something infinite and timeless or destroy the remnants of their dying friendship, but when she turns and faces her window, she finds it hard to focus on why she believed this to be such a bad idea. Instead, she stares at her reflection. It’s dark outside, so she sees herself, messed up hair and smudged lipstick and she feels…
She feels powerful.
When she turns around again, he’s sitting on her couch, naked. Elliot Stabler is sitting on her couch, naked, and he’s offering himself to her. She stares at him, her gaze running down his chest, down to thick cock, hard and heavy for her. She climbs back in his lap.
“Take these off.” He says as his hands clumsily unbutton her pants, while he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her.
“You don’t tell me what to do.” She fires back, but she lets him take off her pants and kicks them to the floor. Olivia is just as impatient as he is, needs him just as badly as Elliot needs her, and she’s tired of waiting. All this time, the decades of longing and stolen stares, decades of fantasies and imaginations they didn’t talk about, has worn her out, and now that he’s beneath her, she finds it impossible to drag it out any longer. Another time she would have taken her time, would have put her mouth on him first, to find out what he tastes like, to see how he’ll react, but all of the emotions she’s kept bottled up inside her are spilling out and patience is a luxury she cannot afford right now.
Olivia tries to pinpoint what she is feeling, exactly, to put it into words for herself the way Lindstrom taught her all those years ago. There’s so much anger, and so much sadness, but that’s the way it has been her whole life, hasn’t it? She’s always been sad and angry at the world, angry at her own existence, has always carried with her a dark sense of self-loathing that made her believe that no matter how many victims she saves and how many rapists she puts behind bars, she’ll never make up for the violence of her own creation. But when she stares into Elliot’s blue eyes, she finds herself feeling something else; something more. It is softer, tastes sweeter. I love you, she almost tells him, but she’s not sure if he’d believe her now, when they’re floating in the right-before, while she’s needy and high on her own arousal. She does love him, though. That’s the real reason why she’s spent so long angry at him: because she’s loved him so much for so long that it hurt, and he was either married, or gone from her life.
But he’s here now. She runs her hands down his chest, feels his firm muscles beneath her fingers. He’s not the same as when he left: stronger, and bigger, too. Right here in his lap in nothing but her panties, his big hands grasping at her breasts, she feels small. It’s different from the fantasies she would conjure up late at night, lying awake, when her fingers alone weren’t enough. Fantasies she knows he had, too, or hopes he did, under the cold shower when his wife couldn’t get the job done.
The thought of Kathy sneaks up on her unexpectedly, but she violently pushes it away. Kathy is dead. The only thing that was standing in her way was herself, and the misguided illusion that she would somehow be a better person if she kept herself away from Elliot.
She slips her panties down her legs and throws them to the side. It’s my turn now.
He kisses her wetly while he works two of his fingers, thick and calloused from all the years carrying a gun, inside her. She gasps into his open mouth, and lets herself have this. He won’t make her cum like this - she’s not as young and flexible as she used to be so the position doesn’t quite work - but she needed this, badly. Needed to know the depth of his desire; that he craves her so much that he just had to touch her. He drags his lips down to her neck. She has half a mind to tell him not there, not where everyone can see, but she knows him, knows that that’s exactly his intention. The thought of it alone is enough to undo her. She’s sure she must be dripping by now.
“I want you.” Olivia admits, to him, to herself. He pulls his hand away, wet fingers resting on her hip.
“Take me, Olivia.”
And oh, she will. She pushes him down onto his back, grabs his cock in her hand and runs him through her folds. Slicks him up with her arousal, whimpering quietly when the tip of him runs across her clit.
“Do you want-”
Yes, she wants. She’s practically vibrating with it. But when she meets his eyes, she can tell he means something else. The thought comes to her, suddenly. “Do you want a condom?”
“I-” He gasps, his cock still sliding between her folds. “Not necessarily, but you-”
“I’m old, El.” She raises her eyebrow at him. “Is there someone else?”
“God, no.”
“Good.” She smiles smugly. “Then no.” She’s grateful. She wants to feel every ridge and every vein of him.
He grins up at her. “Good.”
Her knees sink into the cushion beside his hips. Her hand slides along his jaw, slowly, deliberately. She forces him to look at her. She wants his eyes on her when she takes him inside her.
With one hand on his cock and the other one of his jaw she presses him between her folds and sinks down on him. He’s hard as marble inside her and he’s big, but she’s wet, wetter than she’s been since turning fifty, so he slides in easily. The ache when he stretches her open is something comforting. The pain tells her that this is real, that she’s not dreaming, that Elliot is beneath her and inside of her. She sinks down on him, slowly, until the ache bleeds into pleasure, until he’s fully sheathed inside of her.
Elliot sits up. The slight movement pushes him even deeper. Her mouth drops open on what would have been a moan, but no sound leaves her. He kisses her. “Take what you deserve.”
And she does. She rolls her hips. The position they’re in doesn’t leave her much space for long, slow strokes, but she doesn’t care. She wants him like this, close and warm against her while he’s inside her. She wraps her legs around his waist and pulls him closer. With her breasts pressed against his chest, his stomach flush against hers and her arms wrapped around his neck, she starts riding him, slowly at first, so she can feel every ridge and every vein of him inside her. So she can commit it to memory. So that no matter what happens after this, nothing or nobody can ever take this from her.
~
After a while, it’s no longer just her riding him; Elliot fucks into her, meets her halfway every time she moves. He’s holding her to him, her nipples hard, scraping against his chest, her loose hair falling around them. Her eyes have closed. Her hands claw at his back, nails dragging along his skin. He wonders if she’ll draw blood. He hopes she does.
Her eyes are heavy and her breathing is erratic. She’s gasping for air in his lap, crying out for him. The sounds he tears from her open mouth are some of the most erotic things he’s ever heard. Fuck me, she tells him. He fucks her a little harder. Her voice is a high and needy thing he barely recognizes. This was what he wanted; her, blissfully empty-minded, overtaken by her own pleasure. He did that.
Every time she slams down on him he can feel himself teetering closer to his release. She’s so warm and tight and dripping around him, and he’s wanted this for so long he’s afraid he won’t be able to make it last. Though she doesn’t seem very interested in dragging this out; she doesn’t tell him to slow down, even though he can feel how close she is. He feels it in the way her pussy clenches around him, sees it in the way her brows furrow, but she only tells him harder, faster, more. He runs his tongue up her neck. Her skin tastes salty.
He nudges his hand between them, down to where he’s inside of her. His fingers linger for a moment. He revels in the feeling of them, joined together, his cock wet with the slick of her, her folds soft and open for him. He doesn’t linger long, though. His fingers find her clit and she almost screams.
“Come on, Olivia.” He calls her Olivia, not Liv, and drags out every syllable. He needs to come, but he needs to feel her come around him, first. “Come for me. Let me feel it.”
She mumbles something incoherently. His fingers rub her clit recklessly, and the pace of his hips grows erratic, hard and rough in an almost punishing sort of way.
Yes, yes, yes, he faintly hears her say, but it sounds far away. She leans back, holding herself up on his knees, and he watches the sway of her breasts as she fucks herself on him, over and over and over until she slams down on him and shatters, falling apart with his name on her lips.
~
Olivia feels like she might explode. Like she’ll disintegrate in his lap. She can’t think, can barely speak: all she is, is this, this pleasure. He tells her to come for him and she wants to respond, she really does, but when she tries to speak no real words form. She leans back on him, feels something close to pride when she forces her eyes to open and she finds him staring at her, slack jaw and widened eyes. She wants to stay like this, she really does, would have liked to drag it out, but the selfish and needy part of her chases her pleasure like her life depends on it, higher and higher until her eyes fall closed again as she shatters, crying out his name. She wants to scream, but it lodges in her throat.
Her walls clench around him, her pussy dripping, coating the both of them with her cum. Elliot is grunting beneath her, his fingers digging into her hips so hard she wonders if he’ll leave bruises. “Where-”
She keeps moving over him to the best of her abilities, but her orgasm leaves her soft, her muscles weak. “Inside me.” She forces herself closer to him. She digs her nails in his shoulder blades. “Inside me, please, I want to feel it-” their lips brush together in what might have been a kiss, “Fill me up, Elliot.”
She knows that’ll do it; she’s right. He flips them over, climbs on top of her and fucks into her with reckless abandon. She can hear it, the wet sound of her cunt every time his cock thrusts inside her. She lets her knees fall to the side, spreading her legs as wide for him as the couch will allow.
“Say my name.” He groans.
“Elliot.” She moans into his ear. His nails dig into her ass in response. He’s loud. She’s never seen him this unrestrained before.
She repeats his name like a mantra, Elliot Elliot Elliot, until he comes with a shout of her name, his fist buried in her hair, and he spills himself wet and hot and deep inside of her.
~
They lay like that, for a while. Him collapsed on top of her, his softening cock still buried inside of her.
“El, I need to-” She calls him El now. It makes his heart flutter in his chest. I love you, he wants to tell her, but he’s not sure she’ll believe him, right now in the afterglow, still high on sex and adrenaline. He does, though. He hopes he’ll have the courage to tell her next time.
She pushes him off her. His cock slips out of her. When she stands up, he sees it, the way his cum drips out of her, sliding down her leg. Her eyes meet his, daring him to do something about it. He pulls her closer, gathers his cum on two of his fingers and fucks it back into her, painting her walls with it. She’s so wet and warm, his cum and her cum all buried inside of her. He wants to know what it tastes like, what she tastes like.
He would happily stay right here and sink his tongue between her folds, but she seems to have other ideas. She pulls away from him. His fingers slip out of her, wet with her and him combined. He stares at her ass as she walks away.
Elliot thinks she might send him home now. If she does, he might be okay with that. He’s always been okay with keeping to her timetable, because as long as she’s happy, he’s happy, but he can’t help but think that it is still early in the night and there is so much more he wants to do to her.
Olivia goes into the kitchen and makes herself a glass of water. She comes back, half of the glass full, and picks up his shirt from the floor. She puts it on. She doesn’t bother buttoning it. She leans over him, kisses him, takes his hand in her own, his fingers still wet with their cum, and brings them to her mouth. She wraps her lips around the two fingers, her tongue sliding against them, between them, licking them clean.
This sight of her - his fingers in her mouth, her doe-eyed, with swollen lips, while wearing his shirt - might be the most erotic thing he’s ever seen.
She releases his fingers from her mouth, a victorious grin on her face. She hands him the glass and kisses him again. When her tongue presses against his own, he faintly tastes something sharp. It makes his head spin. “You coming?” She whispers, her fingertips ghosting over his cock.
She turns around and walks away. She opens the door to her bedroom. She disappears into the darkness, and leaves the door open for him.
He follows her, eagerly, almost embarrassingly.
He’s left her behind once before, and he’s not going to do that again.