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1990
 Olivia fought the urge to roll her eyes as she pulled the rusty bucket of bolts she tried to pass off as a car up to the curb in front of Northwestern’s student union building. Some couple was making out on the sidewalk. Didn’t they realize they were in public? Olivia just wanted to meet up with Dani and get the hell out of Illinois— Oh, gross.  As Olivia put the car in park and rolled her window down, she realized the couple making out was Dani and the boyfriend Olivia had never met. The one she’d agreed to drive halfway cross-country with over the next few days because they both landed jobs in New York City.  Olivia and Dani had been criminal justice majors together, each of them landing academy spots at different ends of the United States. Olivia was heading home to New York while Dani was looking for sunnier skies in California. Liv made the mistake of telling Dani she wasn’t looking forward to the long drive home.  “It would probably be better if you had a driving partner, huh?” Dani asked a few nights ago while they were finishing up decorating their graduation caps for the weekend ceremony. “I suppose,” Olivia said. “But none of our friends are heading back east. I’m the only one.” “Well, my boyfriend just landed a job at an architecture firm in the city,” Dani said. “He starts in two weeks, and he’s been trying to figure out how to save some money for the trip home. Carpooling could help you both out.” Now, seeing the two of them sucking face on the sidewalk, Olivia regretted her decision to take this guy on, even for a friend. “I love you,” Olivia heard Dani say as she rolled down her window. “I love you too,” the boyfriend said, brushing a curl off Dani’s cheek. Olivia cleared her throat because the clank of her car’s busted muffler hadn’t been enough to snap them out of their little love bubble.  “Oh,” Dani said, hearing Olivia and jumping away from her boyfriend. “Hi, Olivia. So um, this is Elliot Stabler. Elliot, this is Olivia Benson.” “Nice to meet you,” the boyfriend said, running a hand over his short-cropped hair, his face flushed from the little makeout session she interrupted.  There was just something about him that Olivia didn’t like, though she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Maybe it was the blatant public display of affection. She’d never be caught dead making out on a sidewalk in broad daylight. Or maybe it was the way he stood, his chest all puffed out with bravado like he owned the place. Olivia was never much interested in men like that. She preferred softer, more intellectual types. Men who had more brains than brawn.  “You want to drive the first shift?” Olivia asked, assuming a man’s man like Elliot Stabler would want to take the wheel. “No,” he said, surprising her. “You’re already there. You can start.” “Back and trunk are open,” Olivia said, jutting her chin toward the few boxes and bags sitting at Elliot’s feet. Olivia had donated or sold most of her things before heading back. She’d never been much for sentimentality. Growing up with a mother who wished she could erase you from existence could have that effect on a person.“You’ll call me?” Dani said, sounding like a lovelorn schoolgirl as Elliot slammed the lid on the trunk. “I’ll call you as soon as I get there,” Elliot said. “Can’t you call me before that?” Dani asked. “From the road? I don’t leave for San Francisco for another week.” “I’ll call you before that,” Elliot said. “I love you,” Dani told him again. “I love you, too,” Elliot replied, and Christ, Olivia was never going to make it back to New York if they didn’t knock it off. She accidentally-on-purpose leaned against the car’s horn letting out a high-pitched whine that made them both jump. “Sorry,” Olivia said with no meaning behind the words. “I miss you already, baby,” Elliot said, rounding the car to get into the passenger seat. “I miss you more,” Dani said. Olivia couldn’t take much more of their saccharine sweetness and as soon as Elliot had the door shut she took the car out of park. “Bye, Dani,” Olivia said. “Good luck in California.” She didn’t even give Elliot enough time to put his seatbelt on. The twisted knot of annoyance in her gut seemed to ease up as she pulled onto the main road. Enough that she at least felt like she could try to talk to Elliot, this virtual stranger who she agreed to lock herself in the car with for an extended period of time. “So, I have the trip all figured out,” Olivia said. “It’s an 18-hour trip, which we could break down into six shifts of three hours each. Or we could break it down by mileage.” Elliot didn’t seem to be paying her any attention, and instead, he twisted around and reached into the backseat.“There’s a… there’s a map on the, uh, the visor that I’ve marked with locations where we can change shifts,” Olivia said, trying to talk, keep her eyes on the road, and look in the rearview to see just what Elliot was grappling for behind her seat. When he finally settled back into the passenger seat, he had a big bag of green grapes in his hands.  “Grape?” he asked, holding the bag out to her. Olivia didn’t want to think about how long they’d been in his duffle, sitting out there on the sidewalk in front of the student union in the hot sun, likely rotting from the inside out. “No,” Olivia said crinkling her nose. “I don’t like to eat between meals.” Elliot shrugged and popped two in his mouth, chewing like a cow. He turned to the window and spat, seemingly without thinking, shooting grape pits and spittle all over the window. At least he had the decency to look sheepish.  “Guess I shoulda—” he started, scrubbing away at the window with the sleeve of his jacket. “I’ll roll it down. And you know, you can start telling me the story of your life.” “Story of my life?” Olivia questioned. “I mean, yeah,” Elliot said. “We’ve got 18 hours to kill before we hit New York.” Truthfully, 18 hours wasn’t nearly long enough to cover all the ridiculous bullshit that happened to Olivia in the last 22 years. But she wasn’t about to get into her parental drama with a man who wasn’t even smart enough to check if the window was rolled down before he spit. “Nothing’s happened to me yet,” Olivia said. “I’m fresh out of school, starting a new career. That’s why I’m going back to New York.” “So you’re from there?” Elliot asked. “And you’re going back so something can happen to you?” “Yes,” Olivia said.  “Like what?” Elliot asked. “I’m joining the academy like Dani and I’m going to become a cop,” Olivia said.“So you can serve other people and solve their problems,” Elliot said. “I guess that’s one way to look at it,” Olivia said. She didn’t like the way he made it sound like being a cop was such a terrible life choice. He made it sound like helping others was more of a burden than an admirable profession. “Suppose nothing happens to you,” Elliot said. “Maybe you live out your whole life, and nothing happens. You never meet anybody, never become anything, and finally, you die one of those New York deaths where nobody notices for two weeks until the smell drifts into the hallway.” “Aren’t you a charmer,” Olivia said. “I’m sure I’ll investigate plenty of deaths like that, but it doesn’t mean it’ll happen to me. Though I shouldn’t be surprised since Dani did mention you had sort of a dark side.” Flair for the depressive was the exact term Dani had used, but Olivia didn’t feel the need to split hairs over it. “That’s what drew her to me,” Elliot said. “Your dark side?” “Sure,” Elliot said. “It’s attractive. Why, you don’t have a dark side? Something that pulls the men in and drives them wild?” Olivia fought the urge to roll her eyes yet again. “No, no, you’re probably one of those cheerful people who dots her i’s with little hearts,” Elliot said. “You pull men in with your sweetness and your charm.” “I have just as much of a dark side as the next person,” Olivia said, not even attempting to explain to him how dark and twisted her life really was. “Oh really?” Elliot said, raising an eyebrow. “When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first. That way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.” Olivia scoffed. “That doesn’t make you deep,” she said. “And just because I come off as basically a happy person—” “So do I,” Elliot said, interjecting. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” Olivia said.  “Of course not, you’re too busy being happy,” Elliot said. “Do you ever think about death?” “Of course,” Olivia said. “I’m going to be a cop. I’m going to be surrounded by it.” “But it’s just a fleeting thought that jumps in and out of your conscious mind, right?” Elliot asked. “Sometimes I could spend hours or even days thinking about—” “And you think that makes you a better person than me?” Olivia asked. “Because you sit around thinking about the doom and gloom all the time and you think I don’t?” Olivia couldn’t sit around and think about the dark side of life. At least not the dark side of her own life. When she finally got out of Serena’s house and went to Northwestern where nobody knew her, her past, or anything about her home life, Olivia made a promise to herself. She was going to become a new person. She was going to be that happy friend, the sunny colleague that brightens people’s day rather than bringing them down.  She was going to be the exact opposite of her mother, who did nothing but tear Olivia down every day of her childhood and teenage years. “Look, when shit hits the fan, I’m gonna be prepared and you’re not. That’s all I’m saying,” Elliot said. “And in the meantime, you’re going to ruin your whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Olivia said. She’d had enough of this conversation. Rather than letting Elliot get another word in, she turned the dial up on the radio and let the Eagles singing about Life in the Fast Lane fill the air between them.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“You’re wrong,” Olivia said a few hours later. They’d hit static on the radio and were forced to talk again to avoid the silence.
 
“I’m not wrong,” Elliot said. “He wants—”
 
“You’re wrong,”
 
“He wants her to leave, and that’s why he puts her on the plane,” Elliot says. 
 
They’d been arguing over

Casablanca

for the last 45 minutes. One of Serena’s favorite films and apparently one of Elliot’s mother’s, too.
 
“I don’t think she wants to stay,” Olivia said.
 
“Of course, she wants to stay,” Elliot said. “Wouldn’t you rather be with Humphrey Bogart than the other guy?”
 
“I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life in Casablanca married to a man who runs a bar,” Olivia said. “I’m going to be a cop. I know what goes on at bars. Bogie’s place probably got busted at least twice a month for fraud and illegal gambling.”
 
“So you’d rather be in a passionless marriage than be an accessory to fraud?” Elliot asked.
 
“Well, I’d also get to be the first lady of Czechoslovakia,” Olivia said. 
 
“So it would really matter that much to you that the man you’ve had the greatest sex of your life with ended up doing some things that weren’t on the up and up?” Elliot asked.
 
“Yes. And so would any woman in her right mind,” Olivia said. “Women are practical, even Ingrid Bergman, which is why she gets on the plane at the end of the movie. Bogie would eventually get bored with her and accuse her of nagging him to clean up his act. It wouldn’t have lasted.”
 
Why was every conversation with this man so infuriating?
 
Olivia pulled the car over into a roadside cafe. Her stomach had been growling for 30 miles, and she needed food ASAP.
 
“I get it,” Elliot said as they got out of the car.
 
“Get what?” Olivia asked.
 
“Nothing,” Elliot said. “Never mind.”
 
“What?” Olivia prompted again.
 
“Forget about it,” he said. 
 
“Forget about what?” she asked.
 
“It’s not important,” he said as he held the door for her to step inside the diner.
 
“My God, Elliot, out with it,” Olivia said.
 
“Well, obviously, you just haven’t had great sex yet,” he whispered, brushing past her to the hostess’ stand and asking her for a table for two.
 
“Right over there,” the waitress pointed at an empty four-top in the middle of the room.
 
“Yes, I have,” Olivia said to his back as she followed him to the table. 
 
“No, you haven’t,” Elliot said.
 
“It just so happens that I’ve had plenty of good sex,” Olivia said, a little louder than she meant to, earning her a cursory disapproving glare from the older couple at the next table.
 
“With whom?” Elliot asked, pulling his chair out and sitting down.
 
“What?” Olivia asked.
 
“With whom did you have this great sex?” he asked.
 
“I’m not telling you that,” she said. “It’s none of your business.”
 
“That’s fine,” Elliot said. “I mean, it proves my point that you haven’t had it, but it’s okay.”
 
“Burton Lowe,” Olivia mumbled. “His name was Burton Lowe.”
 
“Burton? Burt? No, nope, sorry, you did not have great sex with… Burton,” Elliot said. 
 
“I did, too,” Olivia protested.
 
“No, you didn’t,” Elliot said. “Burton is a guy who can do your income taxes. If you need a root canal, Burton’s your man. But humping and pumping is not Burton’s strong suit. It’s the name.”
 
Olivia’s mouth dropped open. She had half a mind to tell him that Elliot wasn’t exactly a tough guy name either.
 
“Do it to me, Burton. You’re an animal, Burton. Ride me big, Burton,” Elliot said. “Doesn’t work.”
 
Before Olivia could reply, the waitress came to the table to take their orders.
 
“I’ll have the number three,” Elliot said.
 
“Yes, and I’ll have the chef salad, please, with the oil and vinegar on the side,” Olivia said. 
 
“Anything else?” the waitress asked.
 
“Yeah, and a cup of mac and cheese,” Olivia said. "But if it has breadcrumbs, can we leave those off?”
 
“Mac, no crumbs,” the waitress said. “That all?”
 
“Actually, can I have the apple pie a la mode, too?” Olivia asked.
 
“Chef, mac, and apple a la mode,” the waitress said, scribbling it down on her pad.
 
“But could I have the pie heated?” Olivia asked. “And could you put the ice cream on the side, strawberry instead of vanilla? But if you don’t have strawberry, then could I have whipped cream? But only if it’s real. If it’s out of the can, then nothing.”
 
“Not even the pie?” the waitress asked.
 
“Oh, no, I still want the pie,” Olivia said. “But if it doesn’t have ice cream or whipped cream then it doesn’t need heated.”
 
“Uh, okay, I guess?” the waitress said, backing away from the table and scratching her head.
 
When Olivia looked back across the table, Elliot looked confused.
 
“What?” she asked.
 
“Nothing, nothing,” Elliot said, shaking his head. “So, how come you and Burton broke up?”
 
“What makes you think we broke up?” Olivia asked. “He could be waiting for me back in New York.”
 
“Because if you two hadn’t broken up, you wouldn’t be here with me. You’d be off somewhere with Burton the wonder-schlong.”
 
“First off, I’m not

with

you,” Olivia said. “And second of all it’s none of your business why we broke up.”
 
It wasn’t. She wasn’t getting into the fact that Burton was a hell of a lot older than she was and her mother’s student. She didn’t want to have to retell or relive the night he proposed, and her mother cut her eyebrow open with a broken vodka bottle. Nor did she want to have to explain how she almost went to juvie for kicking her mother into the wall and giving her a concussion.
 
“You’re right, you’re right,” Elliot said. “I don’t want to know.”
 
But after she refused to tell him, the table got too quiet. Maybe it was the perfect opportunity to screw with him.
 
“Well, if you must know, it was because of my days-of-the-week underpants,” Olivia said, fighting a smirk as the silly story came into her mind.
 
“Your… what now?” Elliot asked.
 
“Yes, they had the days of the week printed on the butt,” Olivia said. “And I thought they were sort of funny. And then one day Burton said, ‘You never wear Sunday.’ He was so suspicious about what happened to Sunday. I told him the truth, but he didn’t believe me, and we broke up over it.”
 
“So, what’s the truth,” Elliot said. “I gotta know. Where was Sunday?”
 
“They don’t make Sunday,” Olivia said.
 
“Why?” Elliot asked.
 
“Because of God,” Olivia said. “It’s the day of rest. They figure you’re not leaving your bed, so you don’t need underwear on Sunday.”
 
Elliot narrowed his eyes at her, also trying to fight a small grin spreading across his mouth.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The waitress hadn’t bothered to split the bill, so Olivia did the math on a napkin to try to figure out her share.
 
“Okay, so fifteen percent of my share is… $6.90,” she muttered. “I don’t think I have any change, so I can just leave seven so…”
 
Olivia trailed off as she looked up. Elliot was staring at her with a dopey smile.
 
She tried to pretend she didn’t feel her heart flutter a bit when she saw his grin. Sure, he had a nice smile, but she was probably just flying on an apple pie high. When all the sugar wore off, he’d annoy her again,
 
“What?” Olivia asked, reaching up to touch her mouth. “Do I have food on my lip or something?”
 
“No, you’re just a very attractive person,” Elliot said.
 
Olivia fought the urge to let her mouth drop.
 
“Thank you,” she replied, feeling uncomfortable with the compliment, as she often did when someone doled them out.
 
“Dani never mentioned how attractive you were,” Elliot said.
 
“Well, maybe she doesn’t think I’m attractive,” Olivia said. 
 
“It’s not really a matter of opinion,” Elliot said. “Empirically, you’re attractive.”
 
“Well, Dani is my friend,” Olivia said, feeling her cheeks flush as she followed him down the diner steps and back to the parking lot. 
 
She wasn’t sure if bringing up her friendship with Dani was to remind Elliot he wasn’t single or to remind herself he wasn’t. Because a single woman shouldn’t be looking at a taken man’s ass and appreciating how nice it looked in his jeans.
 
“So?” Elliot asked.
 
“So, you’re dating her,” Olivia said.
 
“And?” Elliot asked.
 
“And you’re coming on to me!” Olivia yelled.
 
“No, I wasn’t?” Elliot said, looking genuinely shocked. “What?”
 
Olivia shot him a look of disbelief.
 
“Can’t a man say a woman is attractive without it being a come-on?” He asked.
 
“In my experience, no,” Olivia said, gripping the car door handle tighter than she needed to.
 
“Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say it was a come-on,” Elliot said. “You want me to take it back?”
 
“You can’t take it back,” Olivia said.
 
“Why not?” he asked.
 
“Because it’s already out there,” Olivia said. “Just leave it alone, okay?”
 
“Great, yeah, leave it alone,” Elliot said. “I wouldn’t, like, ask you to spend the night in a motel with me or anything.”
 
“Elliot,” Olivia said, her voice stern.
 
“What?” he asked.
 
“We’re just going to be friends, okay?” she said, pulling her car door open.
 
“Great. Friends. Yeah,” Elliot said. “That’s for the best.”
 
And Olivia thought that was that. Until about an hour later when Elliot just really couldn’t let it go.
 
“You realize that we can’t be friends, right?” Elliot asked.
 
“Why not?” Olivia asked.
 
“Well, the thing is— and this isn’t a come-on in any way, shape, or form—that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way,” he said.
 
“That’s not true,” Olivia said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve had plenty of male friends, and there’s no sex involved.”
 
“No, you don’t,” Elliot said.
 
“Yes, I do,” Olivia said.
 
“You only think you do,” Elliot said.
 
“You’re saying I’m out there sleeping with all my male friends without my own knowledge?” Olivia asked. “My friends Nick and Rafa, I’m just out there riding them on a nightly basis and don’t remember it?”
 
“No, what I’m saying is they all want to have sex with you,” Elliot said.
 
“No, they don’t,” Olivia said.
 
“Yes, they do,” Elliot said.
 
“How would you know?” Olivia asked. “You’ve never met them.
 
“Because no man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive,” Elliot said. “He always wants to have sex with her.”
 
“So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?” Olivia asked.
 
“No, you pretty much wanna nail them too,” Elliot said.
 
“Well, what if she doesn’t want to have sex with you?” Olivia asked.
 
“We’re not assholes, Olivia,” Elliot said. “We’re not going to force women to have sex with us, but when the sex thing is already out there, the friendship is ultimately doomed. End of story. Once you want to sleep with a woman, the friendship is gone.”
 
“I guess we’re not going to be friends then,” Olivia said, wondering why she felt a strange pit in her stomach. It wasn’t like she ever wanted to be friends with Elliot in the first place. But somehow, knowing that she

couldn’t

, that they

wouldn’t

, stung.
 
“Guess not,” Elliot said.
 
“Thank goodness you’re not going to be the only person I know in New York,” she said.
 
“Yeah, what a nightmare that would have been, huh?” Elliot asked.
 
The ride got pretty quiet after that. They listened to the radio and switched shifts behind the wheel. It wasn’t until they pulled up outside of Washington Square Park and Elliot unloaded all his luggage that they really spoke again.
 
“Thanks for the ride,” Elliot said.
 
“Yeah, it was interesting,” Olivia replied.
 
“Nice knowing ya?” Elliot said, sticking his hand out.
 
“Yeah,” Olivia said, sticking her hand out to shake his. “Have a nice life.”
 
“You too,” Elliot said.
 
Olivia couldn’t help herself as she pulled away. She stole one last glance at Elliot in the rearview mirror. She told herself it was just so she never forgot her friend’s crazy boyfriend and the silly little trip they shared on the way home from college.
 
It had absolutely nothing to do with attraction. Nothing at all.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

1998

Olivia never thought she’d find herself in this type of relationship. One where she was supposed to go away for a weeklong domestic violence seminar in Washington D.C., and yet she didn’t want to leave because it meant leaving Dean.
 
As a teenager or back in college, Olivia never would have pictured herself as the lovelorn woman making out with her boyfriend in an airport before boarding call. She used to scoff at those couples who had to snag just one more kiss as if they wouldn’t see each other for years, not just a week.
 
But now she was one of them. 
 
“Dean? Dean Porter, is that you?” a voice said from behind them. “I thought that was you. Elliot Stabler. How’ve you been?”
 
Olivia felt her face flush. She hadn’t seen Elliot Stabler in eight years. Not since she dropped him off in front of Washington Square Park and only gave a teeny tiny look back as she pulled away. It’d felt like eons since that conversation in the diner and her car about men and women not being able to be just friends because of sex.
 
She’d been a female in a male-dominated field for years, making detective in the Special Victims Unit in the last few years. Her partner, Fin, blew Elliot’s little theory out of the water. Fin did not want to sleep with her. They were practically brother and sister, and he would never entertain a thought that was so incestuous. 
 
“Elliot, sure, I remember you,” Dean said. “I’ve been fine. How are you?”
 
“I’m great,” Elliot said. “Yeah, I was just walking by on the way to my gate, and I thought it was you.”
 
“Yep,” Dean said, scratching at his neck. “It’s me.”
 
“So, are you still investigating with the D.A.’s office?” Elliot asked. “Or did you give up trying to toss hardworking people under the bus?”
 
“Oh, no, I transferred to the Bureau,” Dean said. “I’m a field agent, still based in New York. Are you still with Watson, Warner, and Clark?”
 
“Yeah, I just got promoted to project architect, actually,” Elliot said. “In fact, I’m heading out of town to meet with some of the senior partners from another office.”
 
The conversation between them dropped, and Dean cleared his throat.
 
“Oh, Elliot, this is Olivia Benson,” Dean said, gesturing to her. “Elliot Stabler. We met when I investigated one of his bosses a few years back.”
 
Dean chuckled nervously.
 
“Well, listen, I have a plane to catch,” Elliot said, shouldering his duffle bag. “It was good to see you, Dean.”
 
“Same, Elliot,” Dean said, giving him a small wave as Elliot turned his back on them.
 
Olivia, meanwhile, had been holding her breath the entire time, wondering if Elliot would recognize her. She looked about the same as in 1990 when they’d taken their trip. She’d traded her long tresses for a short, auburn-tinted bob. But aside from that, she hadn’t changed much.
 
“Thank God he couldn’t place me,” Olivia said, exhaling when Elliot was finally out of earshot. “I drove from college to New York with him eight years ago, and that was the longest night of my life.”
 
“What happened?” Dean asked.
 
“He made a pass at me,” Olivia said. “And, of course, I said no because he was dating one of my friends from school. Her name was…”
 
She tried to stop and think. What was Elliot’s girlfriend’s name? The girl from her criminal justice classes?
 
“I can’t even remember her name,” Olivia said. “But at the time, we were such good friends, and there was no way I would get involved with her boyfriend.”
 
“So what happened?” Dean asked.
 
“Oh, I said we could just be friends, but this is the part I definitely remember,” she said. “He said that men and women could never be friends. Do you think that’s true?”
 
Dean knit his eyebrows together, thinking about it.
 
“No,” he answered.
 
“Do you have any female friends?” Olivia asked. “Ones who are just friends?”
 
“No,” Dean said. “But I can get one if it’s important to you.”
 
Olivia shook her head, and then the lightbulb went off.
 
“Dani Beck,” Olivia said. “That was her name.”
 
Dean smiled and leaned down to give her one more kiss on the forehead.
 
“I’m going to miss you this week,” he said. “And I love you.”
 
Olivia felt a prickling feeling spread through her body.
 
“You do?” she asked.
 
“I do,” Dean said.
 
Was she supposed to say it back? She

felt

like she was in love with Dean. She hadn’t really felt this way since Burton back when she was a teenager, but she’d rushed into that situation, and it hadn’t ended well. 
 
Thankfully, they called for boarding over the loudspeaker, and she didn’t have to answer. She stole one more quick kiss and was on her way to the jetway. 
 
Olivia didn’t enjoy flying much but relaxed once they were in the air. The stewardess passed by and started to take drink orders. 
 
“Do you have any Bloody Mary mix?” Olivia asked. 
 
“We do,” the stewardess said. “So, one Bloody Mary?”
 
“Oh, no, I don’t really want alcohol,” Olivia said. “Can I have a glass of regular tomato juice and a splash of Bloody Mary mix, just a splash and a lime on the side?”
 
The stewardess looked confused but nodded and moved on.
 
“Northwestern, right?” a voice behind Olivia said, and that dread about flying returned.
 
Stabler said he was heading out of town.

Not

that he was on his way to D.C.
 
“Yes,” Olivia said with a sigh.
 
“Did you look this good at Northwestern?” he asked.
 
“I looked better,” Olivia retorted.
 
“I highly doubt that,” Elliot said. “Did we ever, uh, you know?”
 
“No!” Olivia said. “We drove from Chicago to New York together after graduation.”
 
She wasn’t sure if she was trying to remind Elliot to assure the man sitting next to her that she wasn’t an easy lay and wasn’t the type of woman he could invite to join him in the mile-high club.
 
“Would you two like to sit together?” the man by the window asked.
 
“No,” Olivia said at the same time that Elliot said, “Great! Thanks.”
 
Olivia groaned as the other man, and Elliot traded places, climbing over her knees in and out of the row.
 
“You were a good friend of, uh…” Elliot said as he settled into his new seat.
 
“Dani,” Olivia said. “I can’t believe you can’t remember her name.”
 
So she hadn’t remembered Dani’s name at first either, but she hadn’t slept with the woman.
 
“What do you mean?” Elliot asked. “I remember. Dani. Dani Bach.”
 
“Beck,” Olivia corrected. 
 
“Beck, right. That’s what I said,” Elliot said. “What ever happened to her?”
 
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “Shouldn’t you be the one who knows the answer to that question?”
 
“You were really good friends,” Elliot said. “I was just some guy.”
 
“We weren’t that great of friends,” Olivia said. “We just had a lot of classes together.”
 
“If I remember correctly, we didn’t get a motel room on the drive because you were such good friends with her,” Elliot said.
 
“You were dating her,” Olivia said. “I didn’t have to be best friends with her to respect her relationship.”
 
“Was it worth it?” Elliot asked. “The sacrifice for a friend you don’t keep in touch with anymore?”
 
“Stabler, I’m sure this will be hard for you to believe,” Olivia said. “But I never considered not sleeping with you a sacrifice.”
 
Surprisingly, Elliot smiled.
 
“Fair enough,” Elliot said. “You were going to be a social worker, right?”
 
“Cop,” Olivia said.
 
“Right, yeah,” Elliot said. “And?”
 
“I recently got promoted to detective,” she said. “I work Special Victims.”
 
“Oh, wow, that’s great,” Elliot said. “Heavy stuff, but good for you. And you’re with Dean. You meet him in the D.A.’s office?”
 
“Yes, he worked with us on a few cases before moving to the Bureau,” Olivia said. “And he’s consulted on a few since the move.”
 
“You’ve been together, what, three weeks?” Elliot asked.
 
“A month,” Olivia said, cocking her eyebrow. “How’d you know that?”
 
“Taking someone to the airport is an early relationship activity,” Elliot said. “I’ve never done it.”
 
“Because you’ve never been in a relationship long enough that required you to do that?” Olivia asked.
 
“Because eventually, if things get serious, you stop doing little things like that,” Elliot said. “And I’ve never wanted anyone to say to me, ‘How come you never take me to the airport anymore?’”
 
Olivia rolled her eyes.
 
“It’s amazing,” she said. “You look normal, but you’re actually the Grim Reaper.”
 
“So,” Elliot said, leaning on the armrest between them. “You going to marry him?”
 
“We’ve only been going out for a month,” Olivia said. “Neither one of us is planning on getting married any time soon.”
 
“I’m getting married,” Elliot said, nonchalantly picking at his cuticles.
 
“You are?” Olivia asked.
 
“Mmhm,” Elliot said. 
 
“

You

are,” Olivia said. “Mister black cloud?”
 
“Yeah,” Elliot said. “Why not?”
 
“Who is she?” Olivia asked.
 
“Kathy Malone,” Elliot said. “She’s a librarian. We’ve known each other since we were 12 years old.”
 
Olivia couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of her throat.
 
“You’re getting married,” she said.
 
“What’s so funny about that?” Elliot asked.
 
“It’s just so optimistic of you, Elliot,” she said.
 
“Well, falling in love will do that to you,” Elliot said. “I mean, Kathy was my first serious girlfriend in high school. We had a pregnancy scare, went out into the world to do our own thing and then reconnected when I got back to the city.”
 
“Well, I’m happy for you,” Olivia said, ignoring the little twinge in her gut that proved she wasn’t as happy as she let on. 
 
“Plus, you know, you just get to a certain point where you get tired of the whole thing,” Elliot said.
 
“What whole thing?” she asked.
 
“The whole life-of-a-single-guy thing,” Elliot said. “I mean, I’m 32. The whole single scene gets old after a while.”
 
“And what did ‘the single scene’ look like for you?” Olivia asked.
 
“You know, you have a safe lunch, and then you decide you like each other enough to move on to dinner,” Elliot said. “You take her dancing and end up doing the white man’s overbite.”
 
Olivia looked at him, confused, until he replicated the dance move. Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to dance.
 
“Then someday, you go back to her place, fool around, and then you know what goes through your mind?” he asked.
 
Olivia shook her head.
 
“How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home,” Elliot said. “Most of the time, it feels like 30 seconds should be enough.”
 
Olivia wrinkled her nose.
 
“That’s what you’re thinking?” Olivia said.
 
“All men think that,” Elliot said. “How long do you want to be held afterward? All night, right? There’s the problem. Somewhere between thirty seconds and all night is your problem.”
 
“I don’t have a problem,” Olivia said. “For your information, I’m not much of a cuddler.”
 
“Right,” Elliot said. “All women are cuddlers, even if they don’t think they are.”
 
Olivia didn’t have much more to say to him. This was like their drive to New York all over again, arguing about the intricacies of sex. She knew far more than he ever would on the subject now, especially after joining Special Victims. Instead of responding, she opened her book and ignored him for the rest of the flight.
 
After they deplaned in D.C., Olivia tried her best to avoid Elliot as she made her way to hail a cab. Unfortunately, he caught up to her on the moving walkway.
 
“Staying the night?” Elliot asked.
 
“Yeah,” Olivia said. “It’s a weeklong conference.”
 
“Would you like to have dinner?” Elliot asked.
 
She turned to him, and if looks could kill… Well, Elliot would have at least been stunned.
 
“Just as friends,” he amended.
 
“I thought you didn’t believe men and women could be friends?” Olivia asked.
 
“When did I say that?” he asked.
 
“On the ride to New York,” Olivia said.
 
“Okay, so maybe I said that,” Elliot said. “But it’s different when they’re both involved with other people. The dynamic is totally different when one or both of them are single. It’s an amendment to what I said earlier. If two people are in relationships, there’s no pressure of possibility. It’s lifted.”
 
Elliot looked triumphant for a moment, but then his face fell.
 
“That doesn’t work either, I guess,” he said. “Because what happens is the person you’re dating can’t understand why you need to be just friends with the other person. It’s like you’re saying something is missing from that relationship. They’ll ask, ‘Why do you have to go outside to get it?” and when you try to tell them it’s nothing, they accuse you of being attracted to the person you’re just friends with. Which, hell, you probably are. This brings us back to the earlier rule: That men and women can’t be friends. So where does that leave us?”
 
“Exactly where we were eight years ago,” Olivia said. “Two people who aren’t friends.”
 
“But—”
 
“Goodbye, Elliot,” she said, speeding up to get away from him. 
 
“You don’t have to rush, Olivia,” he said, his voice somehow smaller than it was a few moments ago. “I’ll stop walking. You go on ahead.”
 
It was good. It was respectful.
 
So why did Olivia wish he had followed her and kept up their banter for just a little while longer?

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

2003

“So I went through his pants pockets while we were in bed,” Dana said, holding court at the little metal table outside the cafe. “Sue me.”
 
“Why would you do that?” Alex asked, dumping creamer into her cup.
 
“You know what I found?” Dana asked.
 
“What?” Alex replied.
 
“They just bought a dining room table,” Dana said. “He and the wife just went out and spent $1,600 on a stupid dining room table.”
 
“Where?” Alex asked.
 
“That’s not the point, Cabot!” Dana yelled. “The point is he’s never going to leave her.”
 
“You’ve known this for years,” Alex said. “Ever since she got pregnant. What else is new?”
 
“You’re right,” Dana said dejectedly. “I know you’re right.”
 
“Why can’t you find someone single?” Alex asked. “Before Trevor and I got married, I knew lots of nice single men. There must be someone. Olivia found someone.”
 
“Olivia and Porter are a sickening love story,” Dana grumbled.
 
“Actually, uh, Dean and I broke up,” Olivia said, taking a sip of her coffee. She knew it was going to come out eventually. And when her best friends, one from the D.A.’s office and one from the Bureau, wanted to meet for coffee, she knew she wouldn’t be able to hide it for much longer.
 
“What?” Alex said.
 
“When?” Dana asked.
 
“Monday,” Olivia said.
 
“Why did you wait so long to tell us?” Alex asked.
 
“So you’re saying Porter is single?” Dana asked.
 
“Oh, shut up, Dana,” Alex said. “Don’t you have any empathy whatsoever? They were together for five years. She’s upset.”
 
“I’m actually not that upset,” Olivia said. “We’ve been growing apart for a while.”
 
“But you two were a couple,” Dana said. “You had someone to go places and do things with. You had a date on national holidays.”
 
“Look, it’s just that our jobs are so busy,” Olivia said. “I’m 35 years old—”
 
“And the clock is ticking,” Dana said.
 
“No, the clock doesn’t really start ticking until you’re 40,” Olivia said.
 
“How are you this composed?” Alex asked. “If Trevor and I had broken up, I would have been a wreck.”
 
“You were a wreck for those three ridiculous days he thought he could do better,” Dana said.
 
“I’ve had a few days to get used to it,” Olivia said. “And really, I feel okay.”
 
“That means you’re ready!” Dana said.
 
“Ready for what?” Olivia asked.
 
Dana reached down into her briefcase and pulled out a little black book.
 
“Really, Dana?” Alex asked.
 
“How else are you supposed to meet someone as a career woman over 35 in this city?” Dana asked. “I’ve got the perfect guy for you. I don’t find him attractive, but you might. She doesn’t have that problem with boxy chins.”
 
“I don’t think I’m quite ready for a new relationship, Dana,” Olivia said.
 
“But you just said you were over Porter,” Dana said.
 
“I am over him,” Olivia said. “But that doesn’t mean I need to get under someone else.”
 
Dana slid the book across the table to her and pointed at a name.
 
“Peter Stone?” Olivia asked. “You fixed me up with him six years ago.”
 
Alex laughed.
 
“Sorry,” Dana said. “Well, wait. Here we go, Terry Bruno.”
 
“He’s been married for over a year,” Olivia said.
 
“Really?” Dana asked. “Well, I’m sure I’ve got someone in here for you.”
 
“Look, there’s really no point in setting me up with anybody right now,” Olivia said. “If I met him at the right time, things could work, but right now, there’s no chance for him to be anything to me other than a rebound.”
 
“Okay, but don’t wait too long,” Dana said. “Remember Mike Dodds? His fiance left him, and everyone said, ‘Give him some time. Don’t move too fast.’ And six months later, he was dead.”
 
“Dana, he got shot in a domestic violence hostage situation gone wrong,” Alex said. 
 
“I’m just saying the right man for you might be out there right now,” Dana said. “And if you don’t grab him, someone else will. And then you’ll have to spend the rest of your life knowing someone else is married to your husband.”
 
Olivia groaned as she took another big sip of her coffee.

This

was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to tell the girls about the breakup in the first place.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“When did this happen?” Ed asked as he sat down from doing the wave from its third lap around the stadium.
 
“Friday,” Elliot muttered. “Kathy came home from work and said, ‘I don’t know if I want to be married anymore.’ Like it wasn’t anything personal. Just something she’d been thinking about all calm and casual for months.”
 
“And?” Ed asked.
 
“So I told her we should take some time to think about it,” Elliot said. “We shouldn’t just rush into a divorce.”
 
“Right,” Ed said.
 
“Next day, she got up and told me she thought about it and wanted a trial separation,” Elliot said. “She wanted to try it and said we could still date like that was supposed to cushion the blow. I got married so I could stop dating. It’s not an incentive to date your wife, who’s supposed to love you anyway. And that’s when it occurred to me that maybe she doesn’t.”
 
“Maybe she doesn’t what?” Ed asked.
 
“Love me,” Elliot said. “So I asked her, ‘Don’t you love me anymore?’ You know what she said?”
 
Ed shook his head.
 
“She said I don't know if I’ve ever loved you,” Elliot said.
 
“That’s harsh,” Ed said. “You just don’t bounce back from that right away.”
 
“Thanks a lot, Ed,” Elliot said.
 
“No, I mean, I know Melody and I didn’t have the best relationship there at the end,” Ed said. “But we never had to question if we loved each other when things were good.”
 
“After that, she told me that somebody at the library was going on a mission trip to South America, and she could sublet his apartment,” Elliot said. “I could barely wrap my mind around that she just said she wanted to move out, and the doorbell rang. I went to it, and moving men were on the other side.”
 
Ed’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline.
 
“That made me suspicious,” Elliot said. “So I asked her, ‘Kath, when did you call the movers?’ She wouldn’t answer me, so I asked one of the guys when she booked the order, and they said nothing. Then, finally, Kathy admitted she’d booked them over a week ago, and she didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to ruin my birthday. So ruining my life a week after was just fine.”
 
“I can’t believe this,” Ed said.
 
“I haven’t even told you the worst part yet,” Elliot said.
 
“What’s worse than the moving guy knowing you’re getting a divorce before you did?” Ed asked.
 
“Her whole little spiel was a lie,” Elliot said. “She’s in love with some tax attorney who provides free consulting services at the library. She moved in with him.”
 
“How did you find out?” Ed asked.
 
“I followed her and stood outside the building,” Elliot said.
 
“That’s humiliating,” Ed said.
 
“Tell me about it,” Elliot said. “And I think the worst part is that, on some level, I already knew. That whole time we thought we were happy was just an illusion.”
 
“Yeah, but Melody’s and my marriage counselor said that relationships don’t break up on account of infidelity,” Ed said. “It’s just a symptom that something else is wrong.”
 
“Oh, really?” Elliot said with a snarl. “Well, the symptom is fucking my wife.”
 
Elliot sunk further back into his seat and crossed his arms. The Jets were losing, his wife was gone, and as far as Elliot was concerned, life sucked.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

2004
 “I happened to see his American Express bill,” Dana said, pulling out a crime thriller book from the new releases section, reading the back, and wrinkling her nose before putting it back. “How does someone just ‘happen’ to see someone else’s credit card statement if you didn’t have him under investigation?” Olivia asked, trying to decide if the latest Princess Diana biography was worth reading. “I mean, he was shaving, and his briefcase was just right there,” Dana said. “What was your plan if he came out and saw you digging through his stuff?” Olivia asked. “Mine was right next to it,” Dana said. “I could have pretended I opened the wrong one. But that’s not the point. The point is that he spent $120 on a new nightgown for his wife.” “Guilt gift,” Olivia said. “We’ve seen it in plenty of cases. He feels guilty for cheating on her.” “You’re right,” Dana said. “I know you’re right. It’s just—” Dana stopped mid-sentence and cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t look now, but someone is watching you in personal growth,” Dana said. “Not one of your perps is it? I can call for backup.” Olivia looked across the stacks to see Elliot Stabler duck his head behind a shelf, clearly caught. “Not a perp, but I know him,” Olivia said. “You’d like him. He’s married.” “Who is he?” Dana asked. “Elliot Stabler,” Olivia said. “He’s an architect.” Dana pursed her lips. “He’s cute,” she said. “You really think so?” Olivia asked. Elliot wasn’t exactly Dana’s type. He was only two years older than both of them. Dana was far more interested in silver foxes, like her married flame Noah Bunning. “How do you know he’s married?” Dana asked. “I can’t see a ring from here.” “The last time I saw him, he was getting married,” Olivia said.  “When was that?” Dana asked. “Oh, about six years ago?” Olivia said. “So he might not be married anymore,” Dana said. “I mean, he married his childhood sweetheart,” Olivia said. “I’m sure something like that doesn’t just go down the drain. Plus, he’s obnoxious.” “Hmm, well, this sounds like a movie,” Dana said. “Maybe a TV drama, at the least. The beautiful lead meets the most obnoxious man in the world…” “What are you getting at?” Olivia asked. “... and they fall madly in love,” Dana finishes. Olivia rolled her eyes. “It’s not like he would remember me,” Olivia said. “He didn't last time. Not until hours later, after Dean told him my name.” “He knew Porter?” Dana asked. “Yes, and he—” “Olivia Benson,” Elliot said, slightly sneaking up on them in the new releases section.  “Hi, Elliot,” Olivia said, feeling her palms get a little clammy. She knew what their meetings tended to be like, and she wasn’t sure a bookstore was the best place for some loud argument about sex. “I thought it was you over here,” Elliot said, holding some military biography and smiling. “Yeah, I’m just here with my friend…” Olivia started, looking around to see Dana waving behind her head and slinking down the stairs. “Well, that was Dana.” “How’ve you been?” Elliot asked. “Fine,” Olivia said. “And how’s Dean Porter?” Elliot asked. “Fine, too, I guess,” Olivia said. “Dana works with him. I’ve heard he’s fine.” Elliot cocked his head to the side. “You’re not with Dean anymore?” he asked. “No, we broke up about a year ago,” Olivia said. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Elliot said. “Well, things happen, you know,” Olivia said. The pause after her words went on just a little too long. “So, how about you?” Olivia asked. “How’s married life?” Elliot scratched at his chin. “I’m fine, but married life isn’t going so hot,” he said. “I’ve been divorced for about three months.” Olivia didn’t mean for her eyes to bug out of her head, but she never would have suspected that a childhood sweetheart reconnection would end in divorce. “I’m so sorry, Elliot,” she said. “What are you going to do, I guess?” Elliot said. “So what happened with you and Dean?” Olivia shook her head. “That’s a much longer conversation,” Olivia said. “Then how about lunch?” Elliot asked, holding a hand up before she could protest. “Totally casual. I won’t even offer to pay for your meal. But it would be nice to catch up.” Olivia thought about saying no. This was her only day off this week, and she and Dana had plans to do some shopping and do a whole lot of nothing. Elliot Stabler and his banter weren’t in the cards. And yet, she hadn’t really told anyone the whole story about what happened with Dean. Not Dana, not Alex, not Fin. They all just assumed that Olivia and Dean had just grown apart. It might be nice to tell the whole story to someone. Even if that someone was Elliot Stabler. It wasn’t exactly a risk. They’d probably go to lunch and then not see each other for another five to ten years.  “I guess lunch would be fine,” Olivia said. “Great,” Elliot said, a little more enthusiastically than expected. “Just let me pay for this, and we can go. How do you feel about Chinese? There’s this great little place not too far from here.” “Woo Hop?” Olivia asked. “It’s near my precinct. We order in from there all the time. It’s my favorite.” “Mine too,” Elliot said. “Small world.” Initially, sitting down to lunch with Elliot was a bit awkward. They talked over each other and stumbled over their words. But eventually, it got easier. The food came, they talked about their jobs and the weather, and eventually, the conversation came back to Dean. “When Dean and I first started seeing each other, you know, back when you saw us at the airport, we wanted the same things,” Olivia said. “We wanted to live together but weren’t interested in getting married. Everyone around us was getting married, and we felt like it was ruining their relationships.” Olivia realized how it sounded after it was out of her mouth, considering Elliot was newly divorced. “It definitely can,” Elliot said, nodding. “One of the things nobody seems to tell you about getting married and having kids is that the sex dries up,” Olivia said. “My friend Alex never really wanted to have kids, but she and her husband Trevor got pregnant. When Maggie was a baby, one time, Alex just said they never had sex anymore. It was such a matter-of-fact statement that Maggie and work came first, and they just didn’t have time for it anymore.” “And they’re getting a divorce?” Elliot asked. “No, that’s the wild thing,” Olivia said. “They seem even closer now than they were before. But that was never something I wanted. Dean and I used to talk about it, and we said we were so lucky to have such a great relationship and no kids. We could have sex on the kitchen floor, fly off to Rome at a moment’s notice if we felt like it.” “Sounds nice,” Elliot said. “It was,” Olivia said. “Until one day, I took Maggie for the afternoon. I promised her ice cream and a walk in the park. We were wandering around playing ‘I spy,’ you know, like ‘I spy a doggie,’ or ‘I spy a cab.’ And we walked by this man and woman with two little kids, and the guy had one of them on his shoulders, and Maggie said, ‘I spy a family.’ And I don’t know what hit me, but I just started to cry.” “You did?” Elliot asked. “Yeah,” Olivia said, feeling slightly embarrassed about it, but finally getting it out in the open was good. “I didn’t have much family growing up and thought I would never need one. But when I looked at that couple and those kids for the first time, it really felt like something was missing. So I went home and told Dean that we had never flown off to Rome at a moment’s notice. We’re too wrapped up in our jobs.” “And the kitchen floor?” Elliot asked. “Not once,” Olivia said. “It would have been awful anyway. Cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile. The counter, on the other hand…” Elliot chuckled. “Anyway, we talked about it for a long time, and I finally told him that I thought I wanted kids and a family, and he said he didn’t.” “Olivia,” Elliot said. “But the thing is… I feel fine,” Olivia said. “I’m the one who changed my mind, and that wasn’t what he wanted. I am over him and each time I think about it I get more convinced that I did the right thing.” “You sound really well-adjusted,” Elliot said. “Maybe it’s the department-mandated therapy,” Olivia said with a smirk. “Ouch,” Elliot said. “Tough case?” “They’re all tough cases,” Olivia said.  “I think I’ve seen a few of them in the paper, yeah,” Elliot said. “It’s pretty incredible what you do, Benson. I always thought most cops were jerks. But I don’t know. You might be one of the good ones.” Olivia felt her face flush.  “You know, the first time we met, I didn’t like you all that much,” Olivia said. “Ah, sure you did,” Elliot said. “You were just uptight back then. You’re much more mellow now.” Olivia shook her head. “Do you specialize in that? Remarks meant to sound like compliments, but they’re really insults?” Olivia asked.  “He don’t get me wrong, you’re still a badass,” Elliot said. “You’re just… I don’t know, more balanced now I guess.” “Ah, I see, still trying to justify my not wanting to sleep with you as a character flaw,” Olivia said. “And not at all, seeing how it might have had something to do with your attitude back then.” Elliot looked down at his empty carton of food. “What’s the statute of limitations on apologies, detective?” he asked. Olivia tapped her finger against her chin. “Fifteen years,” she said. “Ooh, I can get in just under the wire,” he said.  Olivia smiled. “You wanna grab dinner sometime, Stabler?” she asked. “Do this again?” “Are we becoming friends now?” Elliot asked. “It sort of seems like it, doesn’t it?” Olivia asked. “Great, a woman friend,” Elliot said. “You know, you may be the first attractive woman I’ve not wanted to sleep with in my entire life!” Elliot’s eyes sparkled with a little bit of mischief. “That’s wonderful, El,” Olivia said, testing out the nickname. “Exactly as it should be.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Benson,” Olivia said, answering her cell phone. She hadn’t bothered to check the caller ID, but she really hoped it wasn’t Cragen calling her into a scene.
 
“Hey, you weren’t sleeping, were you?” Elliot asked on the other end.
 
These phone conversations had become a regular thing since their lunch at Woo Hop. They’d made time for dinners, shopping, and spending time together. Surprisingly, Olivia didn’t hate it. She never would have guessed 14 years ago that she and Elliot Stabler would have anything even resembling a friendship, especially because of his assertions about sex. But things had been working out well over the last few months. Having a friend outside the department or the legal system in general felt nice. 
 
“No, I was watching

Casablanca

,” she said.
 
“What channel?” Elliot asked.
 
“Eleven,” Olivia said.
 
“Got it,” he said. “So, you still gonna tell me you’d be happier with Victor Laszlo than Humphrey Bogart?”
 
“When did I say that?” Olivia asked.
 
“When we drove home from college,” Elliot said.
 
“That doesn’t sound like me,” Olivia said.
 
Elliot chuckled on the other end of the line.
 
“Have it your way then,” he said. “Have you been sleeping?” 
 
“Why would you ask that?” Olivia asked.
 
“Saw your latest write-up in the paper,” Elliot said. “I know you said the cases with kids hit harder.”
 
“They do,” she said.
 
“I haven’t been sleeping either,” Elliot admitted. “I think I miss Kathy. Last night, I was up at four in the morning watching

Leave It To Beaver

in Spanish. I’m an idiot.”
 
“I went to bed at 7:30 last night as soon as I got home from work,” Olivia said. “I haven’t done that since third grade.”
 
“I guess that’s what depression will do to you,” Elliot said. “Helps you get your rest.”
 
“I’m not depressed,” Olivia said. 
 
“I think everyone who works your job is a little bit depressed, Liv,” Elliot said.
 
She sighed.
 
“Maybe.”
 
“Do you still sleep on your side of the bed?” Elliot asked.
 
“You mean after…”
 
“Yeah, after you broke up with Dean,” Elliot said.
 
“I did for a while, but now I take up the whole bed,” Olivia said.
 
“God, that’s great,” he said. “I feel weird when my arm or my leg wanders over there. I just… miss her.”
 
“I don’t miss him,” Olivia said. “Really, I don’t.”
 
“Not even a little?” Elliot asked.
 
“I think I miss the idea of him,” Olivia said.
 
“I think I miss the whole Kathy,” Elliot mumbled.
 
“Ooh, last scene,” Olivia said, referencing the movie.
 
She watched the scene play out and knew Elliot was doing the same.
 
“Ingrid Bergman is a low-maintenance kind of girl,” Elliot said.
 
“Low maintenance?” Olivia asked.
 
“There are two kinds of women,” Elliot said. “High maintenance and low maintenance.”
 
“And Ingrig Bergman is low maintenance?” Olivia asked.
 
“Sure,” he said.
 
“Which one am I?” Olivia asked.
 
“Ah, you’re actually the worst kind,” he said, and she could almost hear his smirk through the phone. “You’re high maintenance, but you think you’re low maintenance.”
 
“I don’t see that,” she said.
 
“Of course you don’t,” Elliot joked. “Waiter, I want the house salad, but I don’t want the house dressing. I want balsamic and oil on the side. And I’ll have the apple pie a la mode with strawberry ice cream on the side. On the side is a huge thing with you.”
 
“I just like things how I like them,” Olivia said. 
 
“Yeah, I guess you do,” Elliot said. “It’s not really a bad thing. It’s just… odd.”
 
“When I was younger, food wasn’t always guaranteed,” Olivia admitted. “Sometimes my mother would forget to go to the store, or she wouldn’t make meals, and I had to figure out what to feed myself. Now that I can get whatever I want when I want it… I do.”
 
Olivia and Elliot were quiet as the last line of

Casablanca

came through the speakers.
 
“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
 
“That’s the best last line of a movie ever,” Elliot said.
 
“It’s a good one,” Olivia said. “Much better than the last line of

You’ve Got Mail

.”
 
“Right, the word ‘badly’ makes you pitch a fit,” Elliot said.
 
“They could have ended it with ‘I wanted it to be you.’ That would have been the perfect ending.”
 
“I must be coming down with something because I’m starting to think I agree with you,” Elliot said.
 
“Of course,” Olivia said. “A sure sign of mania. If you’re so concerned, go see a doctor.”
 
“He’ll just tell me it’s nothing.”
 
“Are you going to be able to sleep?” Olivia asked.
 
“I don’t know, but it’ll be fine,” Elliot said.
 
“You sure?” Olivia asked.
 
“Yeah, I have some blueprints I could look over anyway,” he said,
 
“Well, alright then,” Olivia said. “Goodnight, El.”
 
“Goodnight, Liv.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Olivia was shocked she was able to convince Elliot to come with her to an art museum. She’d learned a lot about him over the last few months since their first lunch at Woo Hop. Enough to know that maybe she had misjudged him years ago, but he still didn’t seem like the type to spend his afternoon at MoMA willingly. 
 
She stopped to look at Paul L. Anderson’s

The Swan

and he sidled up beside her. 
 
“I’ve always thought swans were so beautiful,” she said, tilting her head to the side to see the photograph from a different angle.
 
“Aren’t they mean?” Elliot asked. “Most birds are, but I’ve heard of swans beaking people  for kicks.”
 
“They’re misunderstood,” Olivia said. “You really shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
 
“I would

never

judge a book by its cover, Ms. Literature Snob,” Elliot said. “But I will judge a bird by its behavior, and swans are mean.”
 
“Next time we go to Central Park, I’m making you pet the ones that swim in the lakes,” she said.
 
“Not a chance, Benson,” he said, following her to the next room. 
 
She wandered from painting to painting before stopping in front of Otto Dix’s

Sailor and Girl

and frowning. She remembered the background on this one from one of her art history classes in college. 
 
“What’s causing that look?” Elliot asked, downcasting his eyes from the painting.
 
“It’s a brothel scene,” Olivia said. “The artist was depicting wartime Germany when impoverished widows had no other way to make money. It’s sad. It’s infuriating. It’s worse because I still see things like this happening at work today.”
 
Elliot gently put his hands on her shoulders and led her away from it. 
 
“I can help you think about a much more ridiculous sex scenario,” Elliot said, strolling her into the next room. I have this recurring dream where I’m in the middle of the act, and the Olympic judges are watching.”
 
“You’re kidding,” Olivia said.
 
“I wish I were,” he said. “But no. The Canadian judge gave me a 9.8, and the American judge gave me a perfect 10. But my father is always at the end of the table, disguised as a USSR military official.”
 
“Elliot, the USSR has been defunct for years,” Olivia said.
 
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Dad is still there in his military garb, giving me a 5.6.”
 
Olivia had a hard time stifling her laugh in the otherwise silent room.
 
“Shh, you’re going to get us kicked out of here,” Elliot whispered.
 
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t tell such ridiculous stories in quiet places,” she said.
 
“C’mon, I bet you have some sex dream or fantasy that can top mine,” Elliot said.
 
“Unfortunately, my job makes it very difficult to have sex fantasies,” Olivia said. “Although I did have a recurring dream in my teens.”
 
“Oh yeah?” Elliot asked. “So tell me about it.”
 
“Well, there was always this guy,” Olivia said.
 
“What did he look like?” Elliot asked.
 
“I don’t really know,” she said. “He was sort of faceless.”
 
“Okay, and what did the faceless guy do?” Elliot asked.
 
“He would rip off my clothes,” Olivia said.
 
“And?” Elliot asked.
 
“And that was it,” Olivia said.
 
“Gotta say, Liv,” Elliot said. “That’s a pretty big letdown compared to my dream.”
 
“Well, it varied sometimes,” Olivia said.
 
“How so?” Elliot asked.
 
“Sometimes I wore my school uniform,” Olivia said. “Other times, my PJs.”
 
Elliot shook his head and chuckled as he steered her back into the lobby. 
 
As they headed for the museum shop, they passed a sign advertising MoMA’s next art camp, but the possessives were all wrong. 
 
“You would think a well-respected organization like MoMA could hire a few copywriters to look at their signs before they print them out and put them up,” Olivia said. “MoMAs Kid’s Camp. The camp doesn’t belong to a singular kid. And the whole camp belongs to MoMA.”
 
“I didn’t follow a word of that,” Elliot said.
 
“Of course you didn’t,” Olivia said. “You can’t figure out the difference between subject and object pronouns.”
 
“Not everyone grew up with an English professor for a mother,” Elliot said. 
 
“No, but we all took middle school English classes,” she shot back. “And honestly, this kind of signage is unacceptable.”
 
“Alright, Grammar Police,” Elliot said. “If you pull out a Sharpie to fix it, I'm going to fireman carry you out of here. We can’t have a cop defacing private property.”
 
“Oh, shut up, Elliot,” she said. 
 
“So you want an activity where I shut up,” he said. “Well, how about going to a movie with me tonight?”
 
“A movie?” she repeated.
 
“Yeah, you know, one of those things where images play on a screen, sound comes out of speakers, people crunch popcorn too loud at the worst times.”
 
“I know what a movie is, Elliot,” she said. “And I’d love to go, but… I can’t.”
 
“What, you have a hot date or something?” he asked, laughing like he made a joke.
 
“Well, yeah,” she said. “Sort of.”
 
“Oh, really?” Elliot asked.
 
“Yeah, well, I was going to tell you,” she said. “But I don’t know. I felt a little strange about it. It’s not really a date. See, my entire squad got invited to the Policeman’s Gala this year. One of the cases we closed was sort of a big deal and the brass wants us on display. I’m going with one of my coworkers.”
 
“Well, if that’s all it is, why would you feel strange telling me?” he asked.
 
“We’ve been spending so much time together,” Olivia said. “And we did get plus ones for the event, but I didn’t think you’d really be interested in renting a tux and having to rub elbows with a bunch of government hotshots. You have to do that at work enough as it is. Brian and I thought it might just be easier to skip the plus ones and go together.”
 
Elliot nodded, but his face was still a little crestfallen.
 
“Well, I think it’s great that you have a date,” he said.
 
“You do?” Olivia asked.
 
“Yeah,” Elliot said, looking her up and down. “But I hope that’s not what you’re going to wear.”
 
Olivia looked down at her black sweater and jeans.
 
“Of course not,” she said. “I have to wear a gown.”
 
“What color?” Elliot asked. “You look beautiful in blues. Then again, you look beautiful in greens, too. And you’re a knockout in red. You should really wear red more often.”
 
“I should?” she asked.
 
“Absolutely,” he said.
 
Something about how he looked at her when he said it made Olivia’s stomach flutter. And she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.
 
“You know, El, I think you should get back out there,” Olivia said.
 
“Out there?” he asked. “Like dating? Oh, I’m not ready for that.”
 
“You should be,” Olivia said. 
 
“I wouldn’t be good for anybody right now,” he said.
 
“It’s time,” Olivia said.
 
He’d shrugged her off, and Olivia assumed that was the end of the conversation until a few days later when he called her to help him move a new rug into his apartment.
 
“So I went on a date, like you suggested,” Elliot said. 
 
“Oh?” Olivia said, surprised he’d gone out and found someone so fast. 
 
“It was one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life,” Elliot said. 
 
“I think it’s supposed to be that way, El,” she said. “The first date back after a long time out of the game is always the toughest.”
 
“But if the first date was so bad, how do you know it won’t get worse?” Elliot asked.
 
“How much worse could your date have been than Brian spilling chicken piccata all down the front of my dress and then ripping a hole in it while trying to help me clean up?”
 
“Honestly, that sounds like a dream date compared to my dinner with Flutura,” Elliot said. “I mean it started out fine, she seemed nice enough. But she started getting sloppy drunk the second we sat down at the table. I tried to make small talk with her and asked her where she went to school, but she got all cagey about it.”
 
“El, I think it takes a long time,” Olivia said. “It could be months before we actually enjoy going out with someone new.”
 
“And I guess it’ll be even longer before we’re actually ready to sleep with someone new, too, right?” Elliot asked.
 
Olivia felt her cheeks flame. She wasn’t expecting him to bring

that

up.
 
“Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?” Elliot asked.
 
“Well, I mean, Brian and I sort of—”
 
“You slept with him?” Elliot said, his voice hitting a screech she didn’t know he possessed.
 
“Uh, well…”
 
“Your stomach just dropped two floors, Olivia,” Elliot said. “The unconscious doesn’t lie.”
 
“I’m not lying. Not much,” she stammered. “Is it that obvious?”
 
“I’m your friend, for better or worse,” Elliot said. “And I mean, we probably know a little too much about each other by now, right?”
 
“I broke a rule, Elliot,” she said. “A personal one. And now he wants to see me again.”
 
“Can you blame him?” Elliot asked with a smirk.
 
“I just… I can’t do that right now with him. I didn’t mean for this to… I mean, I guess you never do…”
 
“But sometimes you do,” Elliot said. “Be nice to him, maybe even over nice. He’ll be cold, but he’ll get over it.”
 
It was solid advice. Olivia had a rule that she didn’t sleep with co-workers and wasn’t quite sure

why

she’d done it. Maybe it was the wine or his jokes about the brass behind their backs. Maybe it was how he’d kept pawing at her chest, trying to clean up the chicken piccata. 
 
Or maybe it was Elliot’s stupid voice in her stupid head reminding her that men and women couldn’t be just friends if there was sex between them. And for whatever reason, she’d been attracted to Brian.
 
“It happens,” Elliot said, his voice low.
 
“Really?” she asked.
 
“Really,” he answered.
 
It didn’t usually happen to her, though. She was more careful about her relationships. 
 
She’d just have to trust Elliot on this one, and it would all blow over eventually.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“I don’t understand this relationship,” Ed said from the batting cage beside Elliot’s.
 
“What do you mean?” Elliot asked, scratching at the goatee he’d been trying to grow for the last few weeks. Flutura was into beards, apparently.
 
“So, you enjoy being with this girl, right?” Ed asked.
 
“Yeah,” Elliot said.
 
“And you find her attractive?” Ed asked.
 
“She’s beautiful,” Elliot said, keeping his eye on the next ball the automatic pitcher sent.
 
“And you’re not sleeping with her?” Ed asked.
 
“No,” Elliot said.
 
“You’re afraid to let yourself be happy,” Ed said. “That’s what this is.”
 
“Why can’t you give me credit for this?” Elliot asked. “This is a big thing. I’ve never had a relationship like this with a woman. I feel like I’m growing. I’m not even jealous that she slept with her coworker a few weeks ago.”
 
“You find her attractive, you’re closer to her than any woman you’ve ever known, and you, Elliot Stabler, aren’t jealous that she slept with another man?” Ed asked. 
 
“She said it was a one-time thing,” Elliot said. “A mistake.”
 
“And yet you’re bringing it up to me,” Ed said. “A guy who busts people for sleeping with their coworkers semi-regularly.”
 
“I’m not jealous,” Elliot said.
 
“No. Of course not,” Ed said.
 
“This relationship is really freeing,” Elliot said. “I can say anything to her.”
 
“You can say things to her you can’t say to me?” Ed asked.
 
“Nah, it’s just different,” Elliot said. “It’s a whole new perspective on things. She tells me about the men she goes out with, and I can talk to her about the women I see.”
 
“You mean you’ve seen more than just that Flutura woman?” Ed asked.
 
“Well, no,” Elliot said. “But we’ve been on three dates, and I’ve told her about all of them. How Flutura meowed when we were making out last time.”
 
“You made a woman meow?” Ed asked.
 
“Yeah, but that’s not the point,” Elliot said. “Quite frankly, it was a little weird. But I can tell Liv these things. And the great thing is, I don’t have to lie. I can just be myself. There’s no pressure of always thinking about if I should try to get her into bed or what’s going to happen when we get there. I can just be myself.”
 
“And you weren’t yourself with Kathy?” Ed asked.
 
“I already told you it’s different,” Elliot said. “Being around Liv is different from any other relationship I’ve ever had.”
 
“But you’re not dating her,” Ed said. “Not sleeping with her.”
 
“Not even thinking about it,” Elliot said.
 
He ignored the scoff from Ed’s cage as he cracked a ball into the outfield.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“You’ve really never had a one-night stand, El?” Olivia asked, dumbfounded as they sat across from each other at Katz’s. With his unhealthy interest in sex, comments like wanting to get a hotel room with her the first night she met him, and his “only hold her for 30 seconds” quip, she would have lost a lot of money on that bet.
 
“What can I say,” Elliot said, shrugging and trying to be nonchalant even though the tips of his ears had turned red. “I like the connection that comes from a relationship.”
 
“I get that,” Olivia said. She’d never been shy about having a one-night stand, though she liked the challenge of learning someone’s body long-term and having them learn hers. 
 
“So how do you do it?” Elliot asked. “Like, what do you say to someone when you know you’re only going to sleep with them for one night? How do you get them out of your bed in the morning?”
 
“I usually go with the tried and true, ‘I just got called into work,’” she said. “That usually gets them up and out the door, so getting them to leave isn’t the problem. Making them think I enjoyed myself, now, that can be tricky sometimes.”
 
“What do you mean?” Elliot asked.
 
“Please tell me you’re not that dense,” Olivia said. “Please.”
 
“I just mean, you’re having sex, so why wouldn’t you be enjoying yourself,” Elliot said.
 
“It’s not that hard to fake

enjoyment

, El,” she said.
 
“Are you saying that sometimes women fake their orgasms?” he asked.
 
“Yes,” Olivia said. “Exactly.”
 
“Get outta here!” he said.
 
“Why? Most women at one time or another have faked it,” she said.
 
“Have you?” he asked.
 
“Maybe,” she said.
 
“With Brian?” Elliot asked.
 
“Why are you still so hung up on Brian?” Olivia asked. “I did exactly what you said. I was nice and let him down easy. He was pissed for a while, but he’s over it now. And he’s actually considering transferring out of the unit for other reasons, so it won’t be so bad when he’s not a coworker anymore.”
 
“Well, all I know is nobody’s faked it with me,” Elliot said.
 
“With your vast experience of what, three women?” Olivia asked, eyebrow arched.
 
“More like two and a half,” Elliot mumbled.
 
“How do you possibly get a half?” Olivia asked.
 
“Flutura and I have only done… a few things,” Elliot said. “But no, none of the women I’ve ever been with have faked it.”
 
“How do you know?” Olivia asked.
 
“Because I know,” Elliot said.
 
“I hate to tell you, but all men are sure it’s never happened to them, but most women at one time or another have faked it, so you do the math,” Olivia said. 
 
“You don’t think that I could tell the difference?” Elliot asked.
 
“Not a damn chance,” she said.
 
“I definitely could,” Elliot said.
 
That’s when Olivia got a wicked idea. Elliot was so sure he could tell a real orgasm from a fake one. Well, then maybe she should give him her best work. 
 
She started slow, sipping her drink and a bite of her sandwich and moaning around the bread. Then she started making little whimpering noises in the back of her throat, and through her squinted eyes, she could see Elliot squirm in his seat.
 
Perfect. That meant it was time to ramp it up. She tossed out ohs and yeses and took the Lord’s name in vain until she pounded the table to bring it home. 
 
When she tossed her hair away from her face and took another sip of her water while looking at Elliot with innocent eyes, he looked like he wanted to melt into the floor.
 
“Still think you can tell the difference?” she asked.
 
Elliot was speechless. He looked like his entire life just flashed before his eyes. 
 
But Olivia was pretty sure she heard the older woman at the next table tell the waiter she’d have what Olivia was having.
 
Yep, she still had it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“It’s good that you shaved,” Olivia said, reaching up to touch Elliot’s cheek as they swayed across the dance floor at a New Year’s Eve party of a friend of a friend at his firm. “It’s good to see your face.”
 
“It was time,” Elliot said.
 
“You mean since you broke up with Madame Defarge?” Olivia asked.
 
“I really wish you would stop comparing her to villains in books I’ve never read,” Elliot said. 
 
“You at least knew she was a villain,” Olivia said. “I’m proud of you for that.”
 
“I know how to use Google,” Elliot said.
 
“Well, either way, I don’t think she was good for you,” Olivia said.
 
“You were the one who encouraged me to get back out there in the first place,” Elliot said. “And just for that, I’m gonna dip you.”
 
True to his word, Elliot spun her around a little bit and tilted her backward.
 
“I must say, you promised me the white man’s overbite, but this is much better than I expected,” Olivia said.
 
“You thought I wouldn’t be a good dancer?” Elliot asked.
 
“I plead the fifth,” she said. “But I really want to thank you for getting me out tonight. You know, inviting me to the party.”
 
“Don’t be silly,” Elliot said. “Any New Year’s Eve from now on, if neither of us is with anybody, consider this a standing date.”
 
A few years ago, Olivia would have balked at the word date. She would have protested, asked him to change his wording, and generally found it laughable that she would ever be on a date with Elliot Stabler. But not anymore.
 
“Deal,” she said, looking into his blue eyes and leaning forward to rest her cheek against his.
 
“We probably couldn’t have danced like this if I still had the beard, huh?” he asked.
 
“Would have been a lot itchier,” she said. 
 
“We wouldn’t want that,” Elliot said, his voice dropping an octave and making the butterflies kick up in her gut. 
 
Elliot wrapped his arm tighter around her waist, and she thought he was getting ready to whisper something in her ear when someone elsewhere in the room yelled, “Ten seconds ‘til the New Year!”
 
It was like that call snapped them back to reality, and Elliot moved back, leaving some space for Jesus.
 
“You want to go get some air,” he said, jerking his head toward the balcony off the event room.
 
“Yeah,” Olivia said, letting him take her hand and lead her through the double doors into the frosty air. As he pulled her along, she heard people counting down all around them. 
 
When they burst out onto the balcony, people shouted, “Happy New Year!” Couples fell into each other’s arms, giving one another kisses, and “Auld Lang Syne” played from the ballroom and the streets below.
 
“Happy New Year, Liv,” Elliot said, not letting go of her hand.
 
“Happy New Year,” El,” she replied.
 
He pushed a runaway curl from her forehead.
 
“Do you… I mean, do you think we should… for good luck?”
 
Olivia felt her mouth go dry.
 
“I mean, why play with luck?” she said.
 
Elliot smiled and leaned in. The kiss was quick, no more than a peck, something she would have shared with any friend or coworker (even Fin). But the feeling, the electricity that shot through her body, all the way down to her toes, that was different. That was something she’d never experienced before. Not even with Burton or Dean.
 
But rather than try to overanalyze the situation, she simply pushed the feelings to the back of her mind and ignored them. Things that happened on the holidays didn’t mean much the rest of the year anyway.
 
Right?

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

2005

“You sent yourself flowers?” Olivia asked as she and Dana walked to the restaurant where they were supposed to meet Elliot and Olivia’s semi-blind date, his friend Ed. 
 
“Yeah, a whole $60 worth and I was going to prop the arrangement up on the front table and fill out the card myself so Noah would see it when he walked in the front door,” Dana said.
 
“What did you write on the card?” Olivia asked.
 
“Please say yes. Love, Jonathan.”
 
“Did it work?” Olivia asked.
 
“He never even came over,” Dana said. “Forgot about a stupid charity thing he had for his wife’s school. He’s never going to leave her!”
 
“Dana, you already know that,” Olivia said.
 
“You’re right. I know you’re right,” Dana huffed. “Where is this restaurant anyway?”
 
“Somewhere in the next block,” Olivia said.
 
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Dana said.
 
“Look, Elliot is one of my best friends, and you’re one of my best friends,” Olivia said. “If by some chance you two hit it off, then we could all be friends, and we wouldn’t drift apart the way it sometimes happens when you get involved with someone who doesn’t know your friends.”
 
“We haven’t drifted apart since I started dating Noah,” Dana said.
 
Olivia shook her head.
 
Meanwhile, two blocks in the other direction, Elliot and Ed were having a similar conversation.
 
“I don’t know about this,” Ed said.
 
“It’s just dinner,” Elliot said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
 
“You talk about this woman like she hangs the moon,” Ed said. “If she’s so great, I don’t know why you don’t ask her out.”
 
“How many times do I have to tell you that Liv and I are just friends,” Elliot said.
 
“So you’re saying she’s not attractive,” Ed said.
 
“No, she’s beautiful,” Elliot said.
 
“But you also said she has a good personality,” Ed said.
 
“She has the

best

personality,” Elliot said.
 
Ed stopped walking and lifted his hands.
 
“What?” Elliot asked. 
 
“When someone isn’t attractive, people always say they have a good personality,” Ed said.
 
“That’s not it at all,” Elliot said. “If you asked me if she was pretty and I said she had a good personality, that’s a red flag. But she’s beautiful,

and

she has a good personality.”
 
Ed sighed as they started to walk again.
 
“You know, there’s also the potential that she knows me from the department,” Ed said. “You said she’s a cop, right?”
 
“There’s no way she knows you,” Elliot said. “Don’t worry about it.”
 
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than they strolled up to the restaurant steps just as Olivia and Dana arrived from the opposite direction.
 
“Tucker?” Olivia said.
 
“Benson,” Ed said, shooting Elliot a sour look.
 
Elliot gulped.
 
“Okay, so you do know each other,” Elliot said. “But it’s not like—”
 
“She’s ever gone rogue on an investigation,” Ed said.
 
“Or he’s ever had a vendetta against my department,” Olivia sneered.
 
“Vendetta is a harsh word, detective,” Ed said. “I wouldn’t have to come around so often if your squad played by the rules.”
 
Olivia was ramping up to say something else when she caught Elliot’s eye. He was standing behind Ed, looking horrified, and she decided, for his sake, she could be polite to the head of the rat squad for one night. Though she was going to have to find out later how Elliot failed to mention all these years that his friend “Ed the cop” was actually Tucker.
 
“I think you were right, Liv,” Dana whispered as they entered the restaurant. “Tonight is gonna be

fun

.”
 
Things didn't particularly pick up once they got inside and ordered their drinks. Despite being seated next to each other, Olivia and Tucker tried to sit as far away from one another as possible. The silence was getting awkward, and Olivia felt the need to fill it. 
 
“El, you and Dana are both from Queens,” she said.
 
“Really?” Dana asked, sounding less than enthused.
 
“Where at?” Elliot asked.
 
“Flushing,” Dana said.
 
“Bayside,” Elliot said. “I wouldn’t have guessed from the accent.”
 
“Spent every summer with Mama’s family down in Alabama,” Dana said as she dropped her napkin and bent down to get it, elbowing Elliot in the ribs in the process.
 
He winced and held a pained smile when she sat back up. 
 
“So, uh, what are we going to order?” Elliot asked. 
 
“I think I might go for the grilled salmon,” Olivia said. 
 
“Ed, did you know Olivia is a great orderer?” Elliot asked. “She usually picks the best thing on the menu and orders it in a way the chef didn’t even think to prepare it. But it’s always good.”
 
“I’m not even surprised,” Ed said in a monotone. “Changing up things to suit your own agenda seems to be your specialty.”
 
To Olivia’s surprise, Dana laughed. 
 
“All in a day’s work as a detective or an agent,” Dana said. “Sometimes you have to spin the scene just right to find your angle.”
 
“Sounds unethical,” Ed said, but his eyes were sparkling, looking for a challenge.
 
“All part of the game, sweetheart,” Dana said.
 
“Well, I’m not surprised to hear that coming from a… You said you’re a federal agent, right?” Ed asked.
 
“Damn right,” Dana said, slamming the knife she’d been using to butter her bread down on the table, nearly putting it through Elliot’s thumb.
 
“Let me guess,” Ed said. “You’re one of those ‘catch ‘em by any means necessary’ agents,” Ed said.
 
“I do what I have to do to close a case,” Dana said, leaning forward, knocking into her water glass, and sending a healthy portion cascading over the lip and right into Elliot’s lap. “Oh, sorry there Nancy, guess I got you a little bit.”
 
Dana didn’t dwell on the whoopsie too much because she and Ed were already deeply arguing about how the Feds poach cases from the NYPD.
 
Olivia tried to catch Elliot’s eye to see if he recognized what was happening, but he was too busy trying to sop water out of his dress plans.
 
After the meal, the four of them strolled down the sidewalk, making small talk.
 
“Oh, look at that watch,” Dana said, pointing into a storefront. “I’ve been looking for a new one.
 
Dana dragged Olivia over to the window and dropped her voice. 
 
“What do you think of Ed?” Dana asked.
 
“I can’t stand the man,” Olivia said.
 
“So you don’t think you could ever go out with him?” Dana asked. “None of that hate sex attraction?”
 
“I don’t know,” Olivia said. She’d never considered Tucker in that way.
 
“The thing is, he’s feisty, and I like that in a man,” Dana said.
 
Olivia felt a smirk form on her lips.
 
“You want to go out with Tucker,” Olivia said.
 
“If it’s alright with you,” Dana said.
 
“Oh, it’s fine with me,” Olivia said. “I just worry about El. He doesn’t like people to know, but he’s sensitive, and he’s going through a rough period. It might be better if you don’t reject him right away.”
 
“No, ‘course not,” Dana said. “I’ll be careful with him.”
 
“The way you were careful at dinner?” Olivia asked with a chuckle.
 
“Whatcha mean by that?” Dana asked.
 
“You elbowed him, almost stabbed him, and spilled your water on him,” Olivia said. “Not to mention you flung some of your scallops at him.”
 
“If he can’t take a little rough and tumble, he’s going to have a hard time finding a good woman,” Dana said.
 
Olivia rolled her eyes. And luckily, she couldn’t hear the conversation the men were having on the other side of the sidewalk.
 
“If you don’t think you’ll call Dana, do you mind if I call her?” Ed asked.
 
Elliot rubbed the place where she elbowed him in the ribs.
 
“No, I don’t mind,” Elliot said. “But maybe don’t do it tonight. I mean, Liv’s a little vulnerable right now. I mean, yeah, definitely call Dana, but just wait a week or so, huh?”
 
“A week,” Ed said, his face falling. “Yeah, sure.”
 
“Why the long face?” Dana asked as they walked back over to rejoin the men.
 
“Oh, uh, I just don’t really feel like walking anymore,” Ed said. “I think I’ll grab a cab.”
 
“That sounds like a great idea,” Dana said. “I’ll go with you!”
 
“Great!” Ed said, sticking a hand up to signal for a taxi. 
 
The cab pulled over, Ed held the door for Dana to slide in first, and then they were off. That left Elliot and Olivia standing on the sidewalk, looking dumbfounded.
 
“So Ed and Dana, huh?” Elliot said.
 
“Looks like it,” Olivia said.
 
“Probably for the best, right?” Elliot asked. “I don’t know if I could take the injuries that come with dating Dana.”
 
“And I couldn’t take the condescension of dating Tucker,” Olivia said. “I can’t believe you never told me your best friend was Ed Tucker. It’s not like you’ve never heard me complain about the IAB rats.”
 
“I didn’t realize that Ed was the thorn in your side,” Elliot said. “You always call him things like ‘the rat’ or ‘the devil’s minion.’ He’s really not a bad guy.”
 
“Well, Dana isn’t as bad as you made her sound either,” Olivia said.
 
“Maybe they’re good for each other,” Elliot said.
 
“Yeah, but that means we struck out again,” Olivia said.
 
“Guess we did,” Elliot said. “Can I interest you in another drink to drown our sorrows?”
 
“Can I counter and invite you back to my place for a beer and a late-night movie? I really want to get out of this dress.”
 
Olivia tried not to let her cheeks flame at the way it sounded.
 
“Sounds perfect,” Elliot said, hooking his arm through hers and leading them back to her apartment.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Olivia didn’t know what they should get as a housewarming present for Ed and Dana. After the disastrous double date four months ago, the two of them took off like wildfire, and they were taking the plunge to move in together. Dana had finally ditched that two-timer Noah Bunning, for which Olivia was grateful, and Elliot said he hadn’t seen Ed so happy since his divorce from Melody.
 
They’d decided to go shopping and go in on a nicer gift for their two best friends together, but Elliot wasn’t so much looking as he was playing around with all the gadgets and toys. Olivia looked up from a foot massager, which looked more complicated than it was worth, to see Elliot slam-dunking a toy basketball into a hoop.
 
“I have to get this,” Elliot said. “Wouldn’t it look neat on my coffee table?”
 
“El, we’re here to find something for Ed and Dana,” she said. 
 
“I know,” Elliot said. “And we will. There’s a lot of great stuff here.”
 
Before the words were even completely out of his mouth, he was hurrying over to a display with a life-sized mechanical pitbull that barked and wagged its tail.
 
“This would be great for them,” Elliot said.
 
“They don’t need a dog,” Olivia said.
 
“It’s not a

real

dog,” Elliot said. “They’d never have to feed or walk her or anything like that.”
 
“A pitbull, though, for Dana and Ed?” Olivia asked. “Isn’t that a little too on the nose for them?”
 
Elliot chuckled.
 
“We should have just gotten them a plant instead,” Olivia muttered. In the last few months, she’d found out Ed actually had quite the green thumb, and maybe she could admit he wasn’t as bad as she’d always thought since he made Dana so happy.
 
“Dana wouldn’t be able to keep a plant alive if the only thing she had to do was sit it on the windowsill,” Elliot said. “Ed’s actually kind of worried about what will happen to his herbs now that they’re under the same roof with her. This place is way better for a gift. Here, let’s get them this.”
 
Elliot picked up some sort of hat and plopped it on Olivia’s head.
 
“What the heck is this?” she asked.
 
“Battery-operated pith helmet,” Elliot said, holding the tag and reading it. “Ooh, with fan.”
 
“Why is this necessary in life?” Olivia asked.
 
“I don’t know,” Elliot said. “Maybe Dana could use it for one of her undercovers. If she’s investigating archaeologists or something.”
 
“Pass,” Olivia said, taking the helmet off her head.
 
“Okay, well, look at this,” Elliot said, leading her to the next table. “This thing makes great fries.”
 
“Because they’ve been itching for something like that,” Olivia deadpanned.
 
But Elliot wasn’t really paying attention. Something else across the store caught his eye.
 
“Liv, no, wait. The hunt is over,” Elliot said. “This thing is the greatest.”
 
Olivia followed him to another table, and Elliot flicked on a karaoke machine.
 
“Olivia, Olivia Benson, please report to the karaoke machine,” Elliot said into the microphone.
 
“I’m right here,” she said, a little embarrassed. “Don’t be weird.”
 
“Look at this, though,” Elliot said. “It’s so cool. ‘The Singing Machine.’ Look, you use the microphone, and the track has backup and everything.”
 
“Elliot, c’mon, they’re never going to use that,” Olivia said. 
 
“Sure they will,” Elliot said. “When they have parties and stuff.”
 
“Ed and Dana are both workaholics like us,” Olivia said. “They rarely have time to throw parties.”
 
“Maybe if they had ‘The Singing Machine,’ they’d throw more,” Elliot said. “C’mon look, they have *NSYNC songs.”
 
Olivia tried to fight back a smirk at Elliot’s secret obsession with boy bands.
 
“Bye Bye Bye,” she read off the card.
 
“Yeah, it’s perfect,” Elliot said, stabbing the button to start the track. “It even has a little booklet with the lyrics.”
 
He started singing the first verse and turned the microphone to Olivia for the pre-chorus. She was actually getting into it. She’d been in her high school musicals and had done karaoke nights in college a few times, but she hadn’t really sung anything in recent years. She used to love it until Dean told her that he didn’t like her voice.
 
Olivia was plowing her way through the chorus, even trying to remember the dance moves that went along with it, when she realized Elliot had checked out. 
 
“What?” Olivia asked. “Is it my voice? I know it’s not—”
 
“It’s Kathy,” Elliot said, his expression crestfallen.
 
“Kathy?” Olivia repeated into the microphone, pulling it away quickly as she heard how the name reverberated through the room.
 
“She’s coming right at us,” Elliot whispered.
 
Olivia put the microphone down and did the only thing she could think of: Grab Elliot’s hand.
 
“Elliot,” Kathy said, approaching them with a warm smile. “How are you?”
 
“Fine, fine,” Elliot said.
 
“This is Vince Palmer,” Kathy said. “Vince, this is Elliot, my ex-husband.”
 
“Nice to meet you,” Vince said, not extending his hand to shake.
 
“Let me guess,” Elliot said. “You’re a tax attorney.”
 
Vince flushed.
 
“Oh, I’m being rude,” Elliot said, turning to Olivia. “This is Olivia Benson. Liv, this is Kathy, my ex-wife, and her… Vince.”
 
“Nice to meet you,” Olivia said, leaning a little more heavily into Elliot’s side. He seemed to catch on and wrapped his arm around her waist. 
 
Kathy pursed her lips a bit at their contact, and Olivia wanted to shout, “Good!” right in her face. That woman deserved to feel a little uncomfortable or even jealous that Elliot may have found someone new. Olivia had heard all the stories of their breakup by now, and it was a bit cruel of her to introduce Elliot to the man she’d been seeing behind his back.
 
“Well, I guess we’ll leave you two to… whatever you were doing,” Kathy said. “It was good to see you, Elliot.”
 
“Yeah, great to see you too, Kath,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Vince.”
 
Olivia didn’t let go of Elliot until Kathy and Vince left the store. 
 
“Are you okay?” Olivia asked.
 
“Oh, yeah, perfect,” Elliot said. “She looked weird, right?”
 
“Well, I don’t know, El,” Olivia said. “I’ve never seen her before today.”
 
“I think she looked weird,” Elliot said. 
 
“If it’s any consolation, it looked like she was miffed that you weren’t alone,” Olivia said.
 
“But we’re not together,” Elliot said.
 
“She doesn’t need to know that,” Olivia said.
 
“I guess if it was going to happen at some point, it was better that it happened when I was with you,” Elliot said. “In a city of eight million people, you’re bound to run into your ex-wife at least once, right? But now it’s happened, and I’m fine.”
 
“Are you?” Olivia asked, not buying the “shake it off” routine. 
 
“Totally fine,” Elliot said. “So are we getting them ‘The Singing Machine’ or not?”
 
While Olivia didn’t think it was the perfect housewarming present, she wasn’t about to turn down Elliot’s idea now.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It seemed like this day was going to get worse after the run-in with Kathy at Brookstone. They were standing around a gigantic wagon wheel coffee table in Ed and Dana’s living room, arguing whether it worked in the space.
 
“I like it,” Dana said. “It works. It says home to me.”
 
“Just because your ancestors pulled covered wagons all across the Wild West doesn’t mean I want a reminder of it in my living room,” Ed said.
 
“Fine, we’ll let Liv and Elliot be the judge,” Dana said. “What do you think?”
 
“It’s nice,” Elliot mumbled, looking out the window rather than at the table.
 
“Case closed,” Dana said.
 
“Of course he likes it,” Ed said. “Have you ever been to his apartment? This man wouldn’t know style if it came up and bit him in the butt.”
 
“Fine, Olivia?” Dana asked.
 
“It’s… it’s definitely a focal point if that’s what you’re going for,” Olivia said with a wince.
 
“What’s so awful about it?” Dana asked.
 
“It’s so awful that there’s no way even to begin to explain how awful it is,” Ed said.
 
“Well, it’s not like I’ve objected to your mountains of books and that stupid rolling book ladder,” Dana said.
 
“Yes, honey, but my books all fit on the bookshelves,” Ed said. “They don’t take up 90% of the floor space in the room. If we’d gotten a bigger place, there might be room for this table and your bar stools.”
 
“Wait, what’s wrong with my bar stools?” Dana asked. 
 
“They have spittoons attached to the legs,” Ed said. “I don’t even want to know where you got them.”
 
“I’m sure Elliot likes them too,” Dana said. “C’mon, Nancy. Someone has to be on my side.”
 
“I am on your side, Dane,” Ed said. “I’m just trying to help you have good taste.”
 
“I do have good taste!” she said.
 
“Everybody thinks they have good taste,” Ed said. “But the reality is that they don’t.”
 
Dana looked like she was about to shoot back, but Elliot interrupted.
 
“You know, Kathy and I started like this,” Elliot said. “We had blank walls, then we hung things up and picked out tiles together. But you know what happens? Years later, you find yourself alone, singing “Bye Bye Bye” in front of Vince, the tax attorney!”
 
“El, maybe this isn’t the right—”
 
“Yeah, no, Liv, it’s the perfect time to talk about this,” Elliot said. “Because I want our friends to benefit from my experience. Right now, everything is great. Everyone is happy and in love. But you gotta know that sooner or later, you’re going to be screaming over who’s going to get those spittoon stools and this book. This $15 book will cost you a thousand dollars in phone calls to the legal firm of  Dewey, Cheetum, and Howe.”
 
“That book is actually a rare first edition,” Ed said. “It cost way more than $15.”
 
“Please, Ed, Dana, do me a favor for your own good,” Elliot said. “Put your name in your books before they get mixed up, and you don’t know who's who's.”
 
“They’re all Ed’s,” Dana said. “I don’t really have many, but he ate up all the shelf space.”
 
“Well, then put your name on everything else because one day, believe it or not, you’re going to go fifteen rounds over who’s going to get this coffee table. This stupid wagon wheel, Roy Rogers garage sale coffee table!” Elliot shouted.
 
“I thought you liked it,” Dana said.
 
“I was being nice!”
 
Then Elliot turned on his heel and barged out the front door onto the stoop. 
 
Olivia sighed.
 
“What was that all about?” Ed asked.
 
“We ran into Kathy while we were picking out a housewarming present,” Olivia said.
 
“Oh,” Ed said, nodding, understanding exactly what happened. “Maybe I should—”
 
“I’ll go,” Olivia said. “You just keep arguing over your furniture.”
 
As Olivia walked to the entryway, she heard Ed say: “Just so you know, Dane, I’m never going to want this coffee table.”
 
When Olivia stepped out onto the brownstone stoop, she saw Elliot sitting on the wall.
 
“I know,” he said. “I shouldn’t have exploded like that.”
 
“You have to learn how to control your temper sometimes, El,” Olivia said. “You don’t need to express every feeling you have every moment you have it.”
 
“Oh really?” Elliot said, snark evident in his tone.
 
“There are times and places for things,” Olivia said. “And shitting all over Ed and Dana’s first day in their new place isn’t one of them.”
 
“Well, the next time you give a lecture series on social graces, send me an invite, and I’ll sign up,” Elliot snapped. 
 
“Just because you’re upset doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me,” Olivia said.
 
“I mean, I don’t need the ice queen telling me how to live my life,” Elliot said.
 
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Olivia asked.
 
“It means nothing bothers you,” Elliot said. “You never get mad. Snarky, sure. Sassy, always. But you’re never mad. You’re never upset. Ever.”
 
“Oh, the poster boy for rage is going to tell me how to control my emotions,” Olivia said. “Really nice, Elliot.”
 
“You never got upset about Dean,” Elliot said. “You just moved on like he never even mattered to you. It never backs up on you like this. You probably still have to see him for work, hear about him from Dana all the time, and it doesn’t affect you. How is that possible? I would have thought with your job you’d have been more attune to learning how to deal with loss.”
 
“I don’t have to take this from you,” Olivia said, narrowing her eyes. “You don’t even know half of the loss and pain and heartache that I’ve had to deal with in my life. Breaking up with Dean doesn’t even crack the top 10.”
 
“If you’re so over him, why aren’t you seeing anyone?” Elliot fired back.
 
“Because I’m always working or with you,” Olivia said. 
 
“Or maybe you’re just not seeing anybody because you’d rather bedhop to push Dean out of your mind,” Elliot said. “Is that it?”
 
Olivia felt like he’d punched her in the gut. Was he really trying to slut shame her for enjoying one-night stands?
 
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Olivia asked.
 
“I don’t know, Liv,” Elliot said. “You made this big deal about wanting a family, and you were disappointed when Dean didn’t feel the same way. Yet you’re not dating. You’re not in a relationship. You’re not trying to make a family. You’re just trying to get fucked.”
 
Olivia felt her blood pressure boil over.
 
“Have you even slept with one woman since you broke up with Kathy?” Olivia asked. 
 
“Why?” Elliot said, standing up and getting in her face. “Will that prove I’m over her? Is that why you’ve slept with half the men in New York? So you could turn Dean into some distant memory?”
 
“Just because I like sex and I’m not out there making love to the same man every night doesn’t make me a whore,” Olivia spat back. She didn’t like how her voice trembled on the last word or how her eyes started to sting. She’d been called far worse by perps on a daily basis, so why did it matter what Elliot thought of her sex life?
 
“Are you finished?” Elliot asked.
 
“Yes,” Olivia said, crossing her arms over her chest.
 
“Can I say something?” Elliot asked.
 
“Fine,” Olivia said.
 
“I’m sorry,” Elliot said, stepping toward her and opening his arms. “I’m really sorry.”
 
Olivia let him envelop her and she had a hard time not hugging him back.
 
“You’re not a whore,” Elliot said. “Maybe I’m just jealous of how easy this all seems for you. Meanwhile, this divorce has been dragging me down like a rock for years.”
 
“Catholic guilt,” Olivia muttered, and Elliot laughed.
 
“I think so,” he said, brushing her bangs out of the way and kissing her forehead.
 
“I’ve only slept with Brian, you know,” she murmured against his shoulder. “Since Dean. Just because I’ve had other one-night stands in the past—”
 
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Elliot said. “I never should have said what I did. I wish I could be more like you. I wish I could move on.”
 
“You will,” Olivia said. “Someday.”
 
“Just not someday soon enough,” Elliot said. 
 
Olivia was going to answer, but they were interrupted by the front door slamming open and Dana pushing the wagon wheel outside.
 
“Not a word,” she muttered. 
 
When Olivia looked back into the entryway, Ed was grinning victoriously.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

In general, Olivia hated party games. And Ed and Dana were not party game people, so it was a bit perplexing to her as to how she wound up in a not-too-casual but not-too-fancy dress standing in their living room (sans wagon wheel coffee table) playing Pictionary. “Uh, a monkey,” Ed yelled from the couch. “It’s a monkey. Monkey see, monkey do!” “It’s a baby,” one of Ed’s sisters yelled from the couch.  Olivia pointed to her, though she had a hard time remembering if it was Stacy or Nicole. They were twins who, even into adulthood, had a penchant for dressing and acting alike. She hadn’t believed it when Dana told her, but when they showed up for the housewarming party, Olivia realized Dana had been right all along.  “Planet of the Apes!” Ed yelled. “How can it be Planet of the Apes when she just said it’s a baby?” Elliot asked. “It doesn’t look like a baby,” Ed muttered. “Baby has a big mouth,” Elliot said. “Mick Jagger as a baby?” Olivia shook her head. “Baby ape!” Ed called. “Stop with the ape, Jesus,” Elliot said. “Baby’s breath,” Ed’s other sister said. “Rosemary’s Baby,” Elliot said. “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” “Kiss the baby,” the first sister said. Olivia kept drawing lines to the baby’s mouth, but nobody understood. This was why she hated party games. “Draw something that looks like anything, please,” Ed said. “This isn’t a murder board. We don’t need more lines.” “Fifteen seconds left,” Dana called from her seat. “Baby… baby fish mouth!” Ed yelled. “What the hell is baby fish mouth?” Elliot said. “Baby boom,” the second sister said. “Baby spitting up,” Elliot said. “Exorcist baby.” “Time’s up, losers,” Dana said, gleefully high-fiving her team members. “Baby talk,” Olivia said, jabbing her marker on the paper. “That’s not a saying,” Ed grumbled. “Yes, because all the hip kids are saying baby fish mouth,” Elliot said. “Final score, our team 110, you guys, 60,” Dana said, marking the scoresheet. “This is why I never tried to be a sketch artist,” Olivia said, returning to her seat on the couch. “I can’t draw.” “Nonsense,” David Haden, her date for the evening, said. “That’s a baby, and it’s clearly talking. You did just fine. If we’d been on the same team, we would have won.” Olivia felt like David may have been laying it on a little thick. They’d only been going out for a few weeks, and she sort of brought him to the housewarming on a whim. After Dana let it slip that Ed said Elliot was bringing a date, of course. “Who wants coffee?” Dana asked.  “I do, babe,” Ed said.  “Do you have tea?” Ed’s sister asked, her twin nodding alongside her. “Two teas,” Dana said. “Can you make my coffee extra strength?” Elliot asked. “Careful there, Nancy, I might just poison it,” Dana said.  Elliot paled a bit. Considering Dana seemed to have a habit of hitting, jabbing, or otherwise injuring him when they were in the same room, an accidental poisoning may not have been too far off. “She’s kidding,” Olivia said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll get yours, El, don’t worry. David, do you want a decaf?” “Yes, please, with cream,” he said. When they were finally behind the swinging door and out of earshot, Olivia started her subtle inquiry into Elliot’s date. “Tia seems a bit cultured for Elliot, don’t you think?” Olivia asked. “Because of the accent?” Dana asked. “Yeah, she’s Interpol. They’re pains in the ass. Always poaching cases.” “Dana, you’re a Fed,” Olivia said. “You make your living off of poaching our cases.” “But we do it for good reasons,” Dana said. “They just do it because they can.” “How did Elliot even get hooked up with her?” Olivia asked. “His firm is updating their field offices in our building,” Dana said. “Because having the UN all to themselves apparently isn’t enough. They were chit-chatting it up by the water cooler a few days in a row. I’m surprised he had the balls to ask her out.” “What could they possibly have to talk about?” Olivia asked. “I don’t know,” Dana said. “I think they went to some gallery opening the other night. And she’s teaching him Italian.” “Elliot doesn’t even like art,” Olivia said. “You’ve dragged him to plenty of art museums,” Dana said. “Yeah, but he didn’t like them,” she said. Olivia must have been quiet for a beat too long.  “At least David is great, right?” Dana asked. “Yeah,” Olivia sighed. “He’s a grown-up. He understands the value of museums and culture. But…” “But what?” Dana asked. “He’s been hinting that seeing each other could be a conflict of interest,” Olivia said. “I’m honestly surprised he agreed to come here with me tonight. He’s pretty intent on keeping things casual, at least on the surface.” “Mmmm, take it from me,” Dana said. “Relationships you have to hide are never worth it.” “Oh, looks who’s changed her tune now that she’s no longer dating a married man,” Olivia said. “I told you he was never going to leave her,” Dana said. “Now, it doesn’t matter if he does or not. I’ve got my man, and I’m not letting him go.” For a minute, Olivia felt the pang of wondering what it would feel like to find your other half like that and never, ever want to lose them.  Meanwhile, in the other room, Elliot stood up from his chair and walked over to where Ed and David argued about the merits of Olivia’s baby drawing. “Ed, didn’t you want to show me that rare first edition you just bought?” Elliot asked. “Oh, right, yeah, it’s in the den,” Ed said. “You’ll excuse me?”  “Take your time,” David said with a smile. Elliot followed him down the hall. “I love saying stuff is in the den,” Ed said. “I haven’t had a den since Melody and I divorced, and she got the old place. Man, I miss that apartment, and it’s rent control, too.” Elliot leaned back against the door as Ed perused the shelves for his new book.  “Does Haden seem a little stuffy to you?” Elliot asked. “Well, he’s an EADA,” Ed said. “They’re all kind of stuffy.” “How did you even become friends with him?” Elliot asked. “We’re not exactly friends,” Ed said. “We’ve just had to work on a few cases together recently.” “And you introduced him to Liv?” Elliot asked. “They may have known each other from work already,” Ed said. “But David invited Dana and I to a Yankees game a few weeks ago, and he had an extra ticket. Said we could bring a friend, and Dana asked Liv to come.” “She hates the Yankees,” Elliot said. “She’s a Mets fan.” “She’s probably like me and will root for any team when someone gives her a free ticket,” Ed said. “Maybe,” Elliot muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. “But, hey, what are you worried about David for?” Ed asked. “You’re here with Tia, and she seems terrific.” “She is,” Elliot said. “But she’s heading back to Italy soon. I don’t think there’s much of a future there.” “You need to stop picking unavailable women, El,” Ed said. “Otherwise, Dana and I will rent you a bedroom when you’re old and grey.” “Perfect,” Elliot said. “With my luck, she’ll overdose me on my blood pressure meds and put me out of my misery early.” Ed laughed and shook his head, finally plucking the new book from the shelf to show it to Elliot.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Olivia felt her entire body trembling. She’d love to blame the draft in her apartment or a 24-hour bug she caught from her sneezing perp at work. But she knew neither of those things was the case. It was pure anxiety and adrenaline running through her veins. 
 
She’d already gone for a four-mile run, which hadn’t done a thing. When she got home, she tried to eat her weight in leftover mozzarella sticks and downed half a bottle of wine. They didn’t make a dent in the feeling either.
 
There was only one option left.
 
She waited impatiently as the phone rang.
 
“Hey,” Elliot said on the other end of the line.
 
“Are you alone?” she asked.
 
“Yeah,” Elliot said. “Just finishing this book that Ed lent me. I didn’t follow half of it.”
 
“Can you come over?” Olivia asked. She hated how small her voice sounded on the tinny line.
 
“What’s wrong, Liv?” Elliot asked.
 
“He’s… he’s getting married,” she said.
 
“Who?” Elliot asked.
 
“Dean,” she said, choking on his name.
 
“I’ll be right there,” Elliot said.
 
It took him longer to get there than she would have liked, but that’s what happens when you live in different boroughs. Elliot barely got half a knock in before she flung the door open, not caring how ridiculous she must have looked in her bathrobe, with her nose all red and runny.
 
“Hi,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
 
“Are you okay?” he asked, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him.
 
“I’m sorry to call you so late,” she said.
 
“Hey, we talk on the phone late at night all the time,” he said. 
 
“Yeah, but that doesn’t require you to put on pants and leave your apartment,” Olivia said.
 
“I could have come pantsless,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been the first person to ride the subway like that, guaranteed.”
 
On a typical day, Olivia would have laughed. It was a good joke. A really relevant joke in her line of work. But nothing was funny tonight. 
 
“I need a Kleenex,” Olivia said, turning toward her bedroom, not giving Elliot much choice but to follow.
 
Olivia grabbed a tissue from the box, plopped herself in the middle of the bed, and watched Elliot tentatively enter her space and perched on the end.
 
“I ran into him today,” Olivia said. “Dana’s been fishing to get one of us to go undercover with this ecoterrorist ring that she thinks is trafficking young girls. I was leaving Dana’s office, and he was in the elevator.”
 
Elliot nodded.
 
“So he asked me if I wanted to grab a cup of coffee from the cart outside, and I said sure,” Olivia said. “We went through the typical ‘how are you,’ ‘I’m fine,’ spiel, and the whole time I thought it was good, healthy. I felt like I was really over him. Then he told me he had news.”
 
Elliot scratched at his jaw but didn’t say anything, so she continued.
 
“Her name is Kim Greylek,” Olivia said. “She’s a paralegal in the DA’s office and he met her on some case. They’ve only been going out a few weeks. She should just be some transitional girl, but that’s not even what hurts. All this time, I figured he didn’t want to get married. But that wasn’t the case. The truth is, he just didn’t want to marry me.”
 
“Liv,” Elliot said, sliding closer to the center of the bed. “If you could take him back right now, would you do it?”
 
“No,” she sniffled.
 
“Then what does it matter if he’s getting married?” Elliot said. 
 
“I just want to know why he didn’t want to marry me,” Olivia said. 
 
“Because he’s a dumbass,” Elliot said.
 
“You know, I always knew deep down that there was just something… off with me,” Olivia said. “Did I ever tell you why I joined SVU?”
 
“No,” Elliot said. “I always just figured it’s because you wanted to help people.”
 
“Yeah, but there’s more to it than that,” Olivia said. “My father was a rapist. He raped my mother, and she had me. I never met him, and she never even told me his name, if she knew it at all. But there was always this dark cloud over me that I wasn’t meant to be here or had to make up for how I got here. I bet Dean could sense that. He could sense that those aren’t the kind of genes you want to pass on to your children.”
 
“Olivia,” Elliot said, getting even closer now and taking her hand in his. “That’s not true. You do not have some forcefield that pushes other people away or some beacon that says you’re damaged goods.”
 
“Remember when I told you all those years ago I had good sex with someone named Burton?” Olivia asked. “He was my high school boyfriend. Except he was 21, and I was 16. And I thought it was so great that I’d already met my soulmate. He asked me to marry him, and he would take me away from my mother. She told me countless times how she wished she never had me. He was going to save me, and then she intervened and chased him away.”
 
Olivia didn’t miss the uncomfortable look that crossed Elliot’s face.
 
“He was 21?” Elliot asked. “And you were a teenager.”
 
“Five years isn’t that big of an age difference,” Olivia said. “Dana and Ed are seven years apart in age.”
 
“In their 30s and 40s,” Elliot said.
 
“That’s not the point,” Olivia said. “The point is that Burton didn’t fight for me, and neither did Dean because they saw the darkness inside me. And the thing is, my whole life, I’ve wanted to be part of a family so much. I only had one parent, never saw my grandparents, and had no siblings. But nobody wants to have a family with me because they know I’ll fuck it up. And I’m going to be 40.”
 
“When?” Elliot said, wrinkling his forehead at the sudden change in topic.
 
“In three years,” Olivia said. “And it’s just sitting there like this big dead end. I’ve looked into adoption, but I’ve been turned down because I work all hours and don’t have a strong family support system. It’s just not the same for men. Tony Randall had his first kid when he was 77.”
 
“Oh, c’mon now,” Elliot said, climbing fully onto the bed and pulling her into his arms. “Women are having babies a lot later in life now. Didn’t that one actress you like have her first baby at 42?”
 
“Yeah,” Olivia mumbled into his t-shirt.
 
“So 40 isn’t this big dead end,” Elliot said. “It’s all going to be just fine.”
 
“You don’t know that,” she said, looking up at him.
 
“I do,” Elliot said, leaning down and kissing her gently on the lips. “How about I make you some tea?”
 
Elliot moved to get off the bed, and even though she usually didn’t like to cuddle, she realized she didn’t want him to go. She wanted him here in the bed with her as close as possible. He was the only thing that would make the gigantic hole in her heart disappear.
 
“El, could you maybe just hold me a little longer?” she asked, looking up shyly through her lashes. 
 
He smiled softly and kicked his shoes off before climbing back into her bed.
 
“Whatever you need,” he said, pulling her so she sat in his lap.
 
If someone asked her later, Olivia didn’t know exactly why she tilted her head up and started kissing him again. Maybe she just wanted to forget about Dean, or maybe she was finally giving into something over 15 years in the making. 
 
The reasons didn’t exactly matter once clothes were coming off and Elliot was kissing her neck in

just

that spot that men could never seem to find but drove her wild. She didn’t know if the whole thing took minutes or hours before she collapsed back against Elliot’s chest with a huge smile.
 
“This okay?” Olivia asked. “Me laying on you like this?”
 
“Yeah,” Elliot said, stroking a hand down her arm. “Thought you didn’t like to be cuddled.”
 
“Thought you didn’t like to do any cuddling,” she shot back.
 
“I can make an exception,” he said. 
 
“You gonna stay the night?” Olivia asked, feeling herself slowly sliding toward dreamland.
 
“If you want me to,” he said.
 
“I want you to,” she said.
 
“Hey, Liv,” Elliot said before she could fully drift off. “Just so we’re clear, that wasn’t one of your

performances

, was it?”
 
Olivia grinned, rolled over, and pressed a kiss to his chest.
 
“No, El, that was 100 percent real,” she said.
 
It was the last thing she said before she zonked out.
 
She hadn’t expected to wake up the next morning to an empty bed. When she picked her head up off the mattress, she looked over to find Elliot pulling on his shoes on the side of the bed.
 
“Where are you going?” Olivia asked.
 
“I, uh, got called into work,” he said. “There are some problems with plans for one of the remodels in London, and I have to talk to them while they’re still in the office.”
 
“Oh,” Olivia said, feeling a knot forming in her stomach.
 
“But, uh, maybe I can take you to dinner tonight if you’re free,” Elliot said, shifting from foot to foot.
 
“I think so,” Olivia said. “Unless we catch a case.”
 
“Okay,” he said. “Well, I’ll call you later.”
 
“Fine,” Olivia said, an icy dread creeping up her spine.
 
Elliot crossed to her side of the bed, kissed her forehead, and then he was gone.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” Olivia muttered. She couldn’t go back to sleep after Elliot left. Something felt off.
 
“It’s 6:30 a.m., so you better have a case for me,” Dana grunted into the phone.
 
“No,” Olivia said. “I’m sorry to call so early, but…”
 
“Are you all right?” Dana asked.
 
“I did something stupid,” Olivia said.
 
“How stupid?” Dana asked. “Ordered tacos from the cart stupid or shaved your head stupid?”
 
“Why would I shave my head?” Olivia asked.
 
“After the pixie cut of ‘01, anything could happen,” Dana said.
 
“Well, this is worse,” Olivia said.
 
“Spit it out, Benson,” Dana said.
 
“El came over last night,” she said.
 
“And?” Dana said.
 
“I was really upset about Dean getting married,” Olivia said. “And he was being sweet, and then before I knew it, we were kissing.”
 
“Really,” Dana said, the intrigue dripping from her voice.
 
“We did it,” Olivia admitted, a blush rising to her cheeks. She wasn’t shy about sex, but something about it being

Elliot

made the whole thing seem scandalous.
 
“About time,” Dana said. “You probably should have done it years ago.”
 
“Oh, what, in the bathroom of that roadside diner in Ohio?” Olivia asked.
 
“Well, maybe not

there

,” Dana said. “But after you guys reconnected at the bookstore. I mean, you belong together. Everyone can tell.”
 
Olivia bit her lip.
 
“So, how was it?” Dana asked.
 
“It was…” Olivia trailed off. How could she possibly tell Dana it was the best sex she ever had in her life? How was she supposed to admit that all those years ago, Elliot had been right? She didn’t know she never had great sex until she actually

had

great sex.
 
She surely wasn’t going to tell Dana that she had not one, but two orgasms that she didn’t have to fake.
 
“It was good,” Olivia said. “Really good.”
 
“I’m not exactly following what makes this dumb, then,” Dana said.
 
“Well, I mean, it seemed like everything went fine,” Olivia said. “We fell asleep, and he stayed the night, but this morning, when I woke up, he was getting dressed and was going to sneak out. If I hadn’t caught him.”
 
“Oh, Olivia,” Dana said.
 
“He said he got called into work,” Olivia said. “That he needed to talk to someone in the London office. But if I hadn’t woken up when I did, it would have been like he just… disappeared.”
 
“That’s horrible,” Dana said.
 
“I feel like an idiot,” she said. “I told him about my mother and father and how I wanted a family. I should have known it would be too much for him. It was too much for Dean.”
 
“You never told Dean anything about your past,” Dana said. “And there was nothing wrong about telling him you wanted a family. 
 
“I feel worse than I did last night,” Olivia said.
 
“Well, you should never sleep with someone after you find out your ex is getting married,” Dana said. 
 
“You couldn’t have told me that 12 hours ago?” Olivia asked. 
 
“Would you have listened if I did?” Dana said.
 
Olivia heard some muffled commotion on the other end of the line.
 
“What was that?” she asked.
 
“Oh, just Ed,” Dana said. “He has gas. Do you want to come over for breakfast?”
 
Olivia wrinkled her nose. If Ed was gassy, breakfast at their place didn’t sound all that appealing. 
 
“I’ll pass,” Olivia said. 
 
“Well, maybe you should take one of those vacation days you never use and eat bonbons in bed in your underwear,” Dana said. “I’ll call you later, and that better be exactly what you’re doing.”
 
Olivia sighed when Dana hung up, not knowing that Ed had been having a similar conversation across the bed.
  
Elliot was barely down the block from Olivia’s apartment before he felt panic rising in his chest. He needed to talk this out, and usually, he’d go to Olivia, but he’d just escaped from her bedroom like a coward, so that was out of the question.
 
Instead, he dialed the only other person who would listen.
 
“What?” Ed barked into the phone.
 
“I need to talk,” Elliot said.
 
“And it couldn’t wait another two or three hours?” Ed asked.
 
“No, it couldn’t,” Elliot said. “I went over to Olivia’s last night.”
 
“So?” Ed said. “You do that a couple of times a week.”
 
“No, I went over because she was super upset,” Elliot said. “That asshole Porter is getting married, and she was kind of broken up about it.”
 
“He sure is a dick,” Ed said.
 
“Yeah, I know,” Elliot said. “But she was talking about it, and then one thing led to another, and we ended up kissing.”
 
“Oh yeah?” Ed said. Elliot imagined he had a smug look on his face.
 
“To make a long story short, we did it,” Elliot said.
 
“Took you long enough,” Ed said. “You’ve only been attracted to her for most of your adult life.”
 
“I wouldn’t say most,” Elliot said.
 
“Well, 15 years is a long time to be hung up on someone,” Ed said. 
 
“I wasn’t hung up on her for 15 years,” Elliot said. “I was married for a chunk of that time.”
 
“Fine, fine, have it your way,” Ed said. “But Dana and I have been rooting for this. We’ve been saying you should do it for months.”
 
“I didn’t know we had a fan club,” Elliot said.
 
“Dana’s niece calls it ‘shipping,’ though I don’t quite understand why,” Ed said. “So, was it any good?”
 
It didn’t feel right to sleep with Liv and tell. He shouldn’t be spilling to his friend that she had the best body he’d ever seen, fit him like a glove, and officially knocked Kathy out of the top spot of the best sex he’d ever had.
 
It all felt a little too salacious.
 
“It was good,” Elliot said. “Too good.”
 
“How can sex be too good?” Ed asked. “Did you pass out or something? Oh, no, you finished too early, didn’t you? Made a fool out of yourself on the first try?”
 
“No, I did not pass out or finish too early,” Elliot said. “Everything went really well. When it was over, she was pretty tired—”
 
“Nice job, tiger,” Ed said with a chuckle.
 
“— so she snuggled in for bed, and I was just holding her,” Elliot said.
 
“And?” Ed said. “Still not seeing the problem. Did she knee you in the balls or something?”
 
“No,” Elliot said. “She was just laying on my chest, and I was stroking her back, and it was nice. I was thinking about asking her to breakfast this morning, and maybe half an hour into laying there and staring at her ceiling fan, I realized something.”
 
“What?” Ed asked.
 
“That I’d been holding her for 30 minutes, and I hadn’t thought about wanting to pull away from her or get up and do something else.”
 
Elliot waited for Ed to respond. He wanted Ed to say he understood, and it made complete sense why Elliot needed to run. But there was only silence on the other side of the phone.
 
“Liv’s not a cuddler. She told me so years ago,” Elliot said. “But she fell asleep in my arms, and I wasn’t thinking about how to get away from her.”
 
“You’re going to have to spell it out for me because I’m not following,” Ed said. 
 
“Even when I was married, I never wanted to stay in bed and cuddle after sex,” Elliot said. “After about 30 seconds, I want the woman to roll over and give me my space. But with Liv, I… I didn’t want to let her go.”
 
“I hate to tell you, my friend,” Ed said. “But I think you’re in love.”
 
“What?” No, I’m not,” Elliot said. “I was in love with Kathy and never wanted to hold her all night. Plus, even if I was in love, that’s the worst possible thing that could happen. Olivia and I are friends, and we let the sex part get in the way, just like I always knew would happen if I had a woman friend.”
 
“Falling in love is not the worst possible thing that could happen,” Ed said. “Just because you have a failed marriage behind you doesn’t mean—”
 
Ed’s voice cut out, and Elliot heard muffled talking, something that sounded like, “I’m not, don’t say that!”
 
“Ed?” Elliot said. “You there? What was that?”
 
“Hmm, yeah, I’m here,” Ed said. “That was just Dana. She’s on her period and extra cranky this morning.”
 
Elliot shook his head, trying not to think about

that

.
 
“You want to come over for breakfast?” Ed asked.
 
Dana had a penchant for nearly killing him on her good days. Elliot could only imagine what would happen if she was hormonal.
 
“Um, no, I think I’m just going to go home and shower,” Elliot said.
 
“Well, call me later if you need anything, okay?” Ed said.
 
“I will. Thanks,” Elliot said before ending the call.
  
After Ed and Dana had hung up their phones, they looked at each other.
 
“Elliot?” Dana asked.
 
“Olivia?” Ed asked, and they both nodded.
 
“God, they’re a mess,” Dana said.
 
“I know,” Ed said. “They’re in love with each other, and I don’t know about her, but he’s too stupid to see it.”
 
“They’re both idiots,” Dana said. “Idiots in love. Just promise me we’ll never have to be back out there like that again?”
 
Ed licked his lips. He wasn’t planning on doing it yet, but what the hell? He reached into his bedside drawer and pulled out the little box he bought after their second date.
 
“I promise you’ll never have to be out there again,” he said, sliding out of bed to drop to one knee and popping open the box. “Dana, will you marry me?”
 
“You bet your sweet ass I will!” she squealed, scrambling off the bed to hug him and finally get that rock on her finger.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Two Months Later

“This is all happening pretty fast, isn’t it?” Elliot asked, taking a look around the cop bar where a small group of Ed’s friends had gathered in lieu of a traditional bachelor party.
 
“Well, Dana’s had her whole wedding planned out since she was 11,” Ed said. “All she was missing was the groom. Plus, her grandmother is 98, and she’s trying to slide everything in before, well, you know.”
 
Elliot nodded, taking a sip of his beer.
 
“So I’m guessing it’s a small wedding then if it’s just me and no other groomsmen?” Elliot asked.
 
“Yeah, that part was my request,” Ed said. “I can’t stand these weddings where there’s 15 people on either side of the bridal party. It’s ridiculous. Dana doesn’t have much family, and my sisters all got to be in the first wedding. The guest list is slightly longer than I’d like, but at least the bridal party is small.”
 
Elliot cleared his throat.
 
“And, has Dana picked the Matron of Honor yet?” Elliot asked.
 
“You mean Maid of Honor,” Ed said. “Of course she has. Don’t act like you don’t know who it is. Have you even talked to Olivia since you ran out of her bedroom that morning, or are you still being a chickenshit?”
 
“We had dinner that night,” Elliot said. “I wouldn’t just sleep with a woman and not buy her dinner.”
 
“As if you hadn’t bought her plenty of lunches, dinners, and coffees before sleeping with her,” Ed said. “So what happened at dinner?”
 
“We agreed it was a mistake,” Elliot said. “She said it first. We’re on the same page. We never should have done it.”
 
“Right, because you should never sleep with the person you love,” Ed said. 
 
“Would you quit saying that?” Elliot snapped. “I’m not in love with her. If I was in love with Olivia, would I be dating Angela?”
 
“You’re not dating Angela,” Ed said. “You went on three dates with her and called the whole thing off.”
 
“Well, her ex-husband kept coming around,” Elliot said. “I didn’t get a good feeling about him.”
 
“Jealous exes are never pretty,” Ed said. “But okay, if you both agreed sleeping together was a mistake, have you seen her since that dinner?”
 
“No,” Elliot said, sloshing the beer around in his glass.
 
“Why not?” Ed asked. 
 
“We just… don’t know what to say to each other anymore,” Elliot said. “At dinner, after we agreed it was a mistake, we just sat there silently. She ordered a salad but didn’t try to adjust it or get anything on the side. It was like she was a different person.”
 
“I highly doubt your dick changed her that much,” Ed scoffed. 
 
“It’s just like most of the time when you sleep with someone for the first time, there’s still a lot to learn about them,” Elliot said. “Like the first time I was with Kathy or Dani, we had stories to tell each other. But Liv and I already know each other’s stories.”
 
“So she knows about all the shit your father pulled when you were a kid?” Ed asked. “Knows about Randall and the girls running off to Florida? Knows you have a 23-year age gap with your youngest brother, who’s in high school?”
 
“Oh yeah, because that’s the shit you dredge up for pillow talk,” Elliot said.
 
“All I’m saying is if she doesn’t know any of that, then you’ve got plenty of stories left to tell,” Ed said.
 
“She knows some of it,” Elliot said. “About Joey, at least. But maybe you just get to a certain point in a relationship where it’s too late to have sex, you know? Where it changes everything.”
 
“It always changes everything,” Ed said. “Doesn’t matter when you do it.”
 
Elliot grimaced and washed down the rest of his beer.
 
“So, is she bringing anyone to the wedding?” Elliot asked.
 
“I don’t know,” Ed said. “She’s been screwing this paperboy, Moss, from

The Ledger

.”
 
“Kurt Moss?” Elliot asked. “God, I hate that guy. I met him when we were redoing their offices. What could she possibly see in him?”
 
“I don’t know,” Ed said. “Maybe he doesn’t sneak out of her bedroom before sunrise.”
 
Elliot scowled and stood up abruptly.
 
“I’m getting another drink,” he said before stalking to the bar.
  
“Is Elliot seeing anyone?” Olivia asked a few days later when she went with Dana to get her dress fitted. “Does he have a plus one for the wedding?”
 
“No, I think the best man is flying solo,” Dana said, turning around on the platform to see the skirt from different angles in the mirror. “He was seeing this professor for a few weeks, Angela something or other.”
 
“What was she like?” Olivia asked, trying to sound casual.
 
“Perfect hair, perfect skin, your basic nightmare,” Dana said. “But you have better tits.”
 
“Gee, thanks,” Olivia said.
 
“Just stating the facts,” Dana said. “He said her ex-husband was a real creep.”
 
Olivia felt a slight shiver go up her spine.
 
“Have you really not seen him at all since that morning?” Dana asked.
 
“We had dinner that night,” Olivia said. “But no, I haven't seen or heard from him since.”
 
“Rat bastard,” Dana muttered.
 
“Funny,” Olivia said. “That’s what I usually call your fiance.”
 
“So what happened at dinner?” Dana asked, brushing off her comment about Ed.
 
“Well, I told him what we did was a mistake,” Olivia said.
 
“You really think so?” Dana asked.
 
“No,” Olivia said. “But I knew that’s what he wanted me to say. He looked so relieved when I did. He was the one who’s always said men and women can’t be friends because of sex. I know he regrets it. Regrets me. I was always the one who needed our friendship more than he did. I relied on him in a way you’re not supposed to do with someone who isn’t—”
 
“Your partner?” Dana asked. “Face it, you two basically had a partnership, like you and Tutuola.”
 
“Fin and I would never sleep together,” Olivia said. “Ever. Not if we were the last two people alive and had to repopulate the earth.”
 
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Dana said. “You shared things with Stabler that you didn’t tell everyone. You called him when you were hurt. You spent major holidays and life milestones with him. He wasn’t just a friend. He was a partner.”
 
“Well, I’m pretty sure anything we had is ruined,” Olivia said.
 
Dana turned away from the mirror and looked at Olivia, tilting her head to the side.
 
“Are you going to be okay at the wedding?” Dana asked. “Because I can always ask Ed if maybe he could change his best—”
 
“No, Dana, absolutely not,” Olivia said. “Elliot is Ed’s best friend, and he has just as much right to stand up for the two of you as I do. I’ll be fine. It’ll all be fine. We’ll behave.”
 
“If you’re sure,” Dana said.
 
“I’m sure,” Olivia said. “And I have to say, you look stunning in your dress.”
 
“I do?” Dana said, looking down at it.
 
“Yes, you do,” Olivia said. “You’re going to make a beautiful bride.”
 
Dana’s face lit up, and she turned back to the mirror and the seamstress. It allowed Olivia to turn away for a moment and hide the fact that while she was thrilled for her friend, the pain of losing Elliot and still being so far from her own dreams of wanting a family like Dana and Ed would soon have was still right there, just under the surface.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Though she knew all eyes were on Dana, Olivia sincerely hoped nobody else noticed the pained expression on her face throughout the ceremony. Dana had compromised a little, and they had the ceremony at Ed’s church with his childhood pastor, which Olivia assumed was thanks to a hefty donation check from Ed’s mother, considering divorced Catholics weren’t supposed to be able to have church weddings again.
 
That said, Olivia hadn’t realized how much standing, sitting, and kneeling she’d have to do throughout the ceremony. But that wasn’t the only reason she looked uncomfortable. Sitting flush against Elliot in the pew for over an hour after not talking to him for almost three months sent her fight-or-flight response into overdrive, especially because she couldn’t do either.
 
Then she had to walk back up the aisle with him, pose for pictures, and stand in the receiving line next to him. It’d been exhausting. As soon as she got the chance, she tried to tail Alex and Trevor around the reception room. Trevor was a literal giant, and she figured she could hide behind him and be out of sight for just a little while. After a bit, the three of them found themselves out in the hallway.
 
“I’ve never seen Dana so happy,” Olivia said. “It’s almost like she’s a completely different person.”
 
“She is,” Alex said. “But don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll be back to her ornery self when they return from the honeymoon.”
 
“Is she really taking him on Safari?” Trevor asked.
 
“She really is,” Olivia said. She sighed, thinking about how all she wanted to do since she heard their honeymoon plans was talk to Elliot. They would have taken bets on whether Ed would fake sick to get out of the trip or how long it would take for Dana to almost get them eaten by a wild animal.
 
“Now, what are we going to do about you?” Alex asked, one perfectly manicured eyebrow arched.
 
“What about me?” Olivia asked.
 
“It’s just… you’re the last single one left,” Alex said.
 
Olivia didn’t know how to respond. She didn’t like the note of pity in Alex’s voice.
 
Maybe Trevor could sense an impending incident because he took Alex by the hand.
 
“C’mon, hon,” he said. “Let’s dance.”
 
Olivia thought she would have a few seconds to breathe on her own, but the universe was never on her side like that. She surely wasn’t ready to be standing in a hallway alone with Elliot, but there she was.
 
“Hi,” he said a bit sheepishly.
 
“Hello,” she said, not working too hard to put any feeling behind her words.
 
“Nice ceremony,” he said.
 
“Beautiful,” she answered.
 
The silence stretched for just a beat too long, and, as always, Elliot couldn’t stand to listen to empty air.
 
“I’m just glad they did this before the holidays,” he said. “They sure are rough. Every year, I just try to get from the day before Thanksgiving to January 2.”
 
“Lot of suicides this time of year, yep,” Olivia said. “And domestic violence cases increase over the holidays.”
 
“I can see that,” Elliot said. “So, uh, how have you been?”
 
“Fine,” she said.
 
“Seeing anyone?” he asked.
 
Olivia scoffed.
 
“Seriously?” she asked.
 
“Is that too awkward?” he asked.
 
“Little bit,” she said. “But no, I’m not at the moment.”
 
“But you did,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
 
“Well, it has been three months, Elliot,” she said.
 
“About how many?” he asked.
 
Even after all these years, his audacity never ceased to amaze her.
 
“You want to know my dating history, Stabler?” she asked.
 
The bastard had the nerve to chuckle.
 
“You’re being evasive,” he said. 
 
“Because I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, feeling the fight or flight response flare again.
 
“Why not?” he asked.
 
“Because I don’t,” she said.
 
He sighed.
 
“Why can’t we get past this?” he asked. “I mean, are we going to carry this thing around forever?”
 
“Three months is forever now?” Olivia asked.
 
“Well, a year to a person is like seven years to a dog,” Elliot said.
 
“And your point is?” she asked. “Is one of us supposed to be a dog in this situation?”
 
“Yeah,” Elliot said, scratching his neck.
 
“Who?” Olivia asked. “Who’s the dog?”
 
“You,” Elliot said.
 
“Me?” she said. “Oh, is that supposed  to be funny because I’m a bitch?”
 
Elliot’s eyes widened.
 
“That’s not what I—”
 
She didn’t let him finish his sentence and instead yanked him by the arm further away from the entrance to the banquet room.
 
“I don’t see that, Elliot,” she said. “If anyone is a dog in this situation, it’s you. You’ve blown smoke about friendships and only having sex with people you care about and not being into one-night stands. But you’ve ignored me for three months and want to act like what happened didn’t mean anything.”
 
Elliot sucked his bottom lip into his mouth.
 
“I’m not saying it didn’t mean anything,” he said. “I’m just asking why it has to mean everything. I mean, you don’t have any problem with one-night stands. I can… I can follow your lead.”
 
Olivia felt something sick twist in her gut. Elliot, the man who’d only slept with 3.5 people in his whole life, who pondered sex daily but never had one-night stands, spent one night with her and didn’t want any more. Just like most men she’d ever been with.
 
Just like Dean. 
 
Elliot had seen the darkest parts of her, and he ran. And now he was trying to blow it off like it was nothing and get back the friendship that

she’d

tried to discourage in the first place all those years ago.
 
“Because it

does

mean something, Elliot,” she said. “And you should know that better than anybody because as soon as it was over, you walked right out the door.”
 
“I didn’t walk out,” he said.
 
“No, you practically tripped over your shoes to get out my door the next morning,” she said. “You said you got called in for work? The line I told you I used to get men out of my bed. You weren’t even going to say goodbye to me. I would have woken up, and you would have been gone. If Dana and Ed weren’t getting married today, would you have ever contacted me again? Would we have gone 10 years without so much as sending each other a happy birthday text?”
 
“We both agreed this was a mistake,” he said.
 
“Yeah, it feels like the worst mistake I ever made,” she said. “I didn’t mean it when I said it back then. But I knew you wanted me to say it, so I did. You wanted let off the hook, and I gave you the out.”
 
“What do you want from me?” Elliot yelled.
 
“I don’t want anything from you!” Olivia shouted.
 
“I didn't go over there that night to make love to you,” Elliot yelled.  “But when I showed up, you looked at me with those big, weepy eyes and asked me to hold you. What was I supposed to do?”
 
Olivia tried to blink back a tear.
 
“So you took pity on me,” she said. “Poor stupid Olivia, who nobody wants.”
 
“No, that’s not—”
 
“Fuck you, Elliot,” she said, then slapped him across the face and ran out of the hallway, back into the banquet room where she hoped to find Trevor and Alex again, say her goodbyes, and leave.
 
Olivia wasn’t sure if Elliot followed her, and she didn’t care. If she never had to speak to him again it would be too soon.
 
Unfortunately, when she got back into the banquet room, Dana and Ed were onstage, and Ed had the mic.
 
“Everybody, please, if I could have your attention,” he said. “I’d like to propose a toast to Elliot and Olivia. If Dana and I had wanted to date either of them, we wouldn’t be here today.”
 
Everyone in the room chuckled and raised their glasses, but all Olivia wanted to do was melt into the floor and die.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Sometimes, Olivia wondered what it would have been like to live in a different era. Maybe she would have thrived in Jane Austen’s time, really found her calling as a flapper in the 20s, or totally killed it as a suffragette in the early 1900s.
 
But ever since Ed and Dana’s wedding, she’d been extremely happy that she lived in an era with caller ID. That meant she never had to pick up the phone when Elliot called, and she’d never be caught off guard when he did.
 
Although the fact that she never picked up didn’t deter him from leaving a bunch of rambling voicemails on her cell. The first came after a tough case where a guy who ran a Christmas tree lot was kidnapping little boys.
 
“Hi, it’s me. Since it’s the holidays, I just wanted to remind you that it’s the season of charity, forgiveness, and the lesser-known season of groveling. So if you call me back, I’ll entertain you with some traditional Christmas groveling.”
 
He tried again about three days later.
 
“If you’re there, please pick up, okay? I really want to talk to you, and the fact that you’re not answering leads me to believe you’re a) At work, b) Home but thinking about work, c) Home and desperately want to talk to me, but you let your phone die again, or d) You don’t want to talk to me. If it’s a through c, call me back.”
 
The next call came a week later.
 
“Look, you know, I just want to talk Liv. I’m not above making an idiot of myself, so if you don’t pick up the next time I call, I’m going to be forced to sing *NSYNC off-key and at the top of my lungs right into your mailbox. We both know you don’t want that, so please, call me back.”
 When he tried again the following Sunday, she wasn’t sure how serious he was about singing to her voicemail, and she didn’t particularly want to hear it. 
“Benson,” she said.
 
“Hey, hi, I didn’t know you were gonna… hi,” Elliot said, and the fact that she could hear the first notes of  “I Want You Back” playing in the background confirmed her suspicions that karaoke wasn’t an empty threat.
 
“I was just on my way to a case,” she lied. “What do you want?”
 
“Nothing, uh, I just… called to say I’m sorry,” Elliot said.
 
“Okay,” Olivia said.
 
She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t. Did he think he could give a half-hearted apology for pitying her and sleeping with her, and she’d fall right back under his spell? His stupid, idiotic spell where he made her feel like he actually cared about her. Like she mattered to him when clearly she never did.
 
“I gotta go,” she said.
 
“Wait, no, just wait, please,” Elliot said. "What are you doing on New Year’s Eve? Are you going to Ed’s sisters’ party? Because I don’t have a date, and if you don’t have one either, we promised we’d spend the New Year together.”
 
Right. That was last year before everything went to hell. She could lie and tell him she had a date. She could make up some excuse about working. But instead, Olivia decided it might be better to lead with the truth.
 
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I’m not your consolation prize. Goodbye.”
 
She didn’t wait to hear if he tried to say anything else because she stabbed the button on her phone, and the line went dead.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Olivia hated the New Year. She always had. There’d been nothing to celebrate as a child, not with Serena passed out on the couch before

Rockin’ Eve

even came on the television. Not in all those years in college or early adulthood where she thought a midnight kiss would lead to forever, or the early years of her career where she always had to work. 
 
The only time she’d ever really enjoyed a New Year’s Eve was last year with Elliot. But that seemed to be a fluke because this year, she’d let Dana drag her to Ed’s sisters’ party, and some overly slick lawyer named Edgar was twirling her around the dance floor. His teeth were too white, and all the spinning made her feel nauseated.
 
“Can I get you another glass of champagne?” Edgar asked when the song was over.
 
“No,” Olivia said. “No, thank you. I’m just going to find Dana. Excuse me.”
 
Olivia spotted her and Ed canoodling in the corner and made a beeline for them. 
 
“I’m going home,” Olivia said.
 
“You’re never gonna get a taxi this time of night on New Year’s,” Dana said.
 
“I’ll walk,” Olivia said.
 
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ed said.
 
“I’m a cop, Tucker,” Olivia said. “I can take care of myself.”
 
“At least let us take you home,” Ed said. “I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if something happened.”
 
Olivia was tempted to roll her eyes, but ever since he’d gotten together with Dana, Olivia had gotten to see a side of Tucker that she didn’t know existed. Underneath the prickly exterior, he was a good guy, and she didn’t hate him as much as she used to. But she still wasn’t planning on breaking up their evening just because she’d had enough of being social and would rather go home and mope in peace.
 
“Look, I’ll call Fin,” Olivia said. “He’s on duty. He’ll come get me and take me home. I’m sure he’s dying to get out of the squad room and away from Munch’s conspiracy theories about how one of these times the New Year will trigger the apocalypse.”
 
“It’s almost midnight,” Dana said. “Just stay a little longer, and we can all leave together.”
 
Olivia sighed and looked around at all the people coupled up and the few single guys in the room she could couple up with, at least for the night, but none of them looked appealing.
 
“I’d rather not be around when everyone starts kissing,” Olivia said.
 
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Dana said. “Hell, honey, I’ll kiss you. Ed can go make out with the ice sculpture.”
 
“Hey,” he said, mock offended.
 
“Thanks, Dana, but I just have to go,” Olivia said. "I’ll call you tomorrow.”
 
She didn’t give either one of them time to protest again and slipped out the front door and into the elevator. She needed air. She needed room to breathe. She needed to be alone because that was all she was good at.
  
Meanwhile, Elliot hadn’t been having an exciting evening either. Ed had told him to come to the party anyway. He’d mentioned Olivia would be there, and maybe it was the perfect time to tell her sorry in person.
 
But Elliot could tell by the tone of her voice during their last phone call. She didn’t want anything else to do with him. He didn’t much feel like ruining the holiday for her too.
 
She had it all wrong, though. He never pitied her. Elliot couldn’t say no to her big weepy eyes and broken heart because—as much as he never wanted to admit that Ed was right—he was in love with Olivia. He saw her broken, feeling like she was worthless, and he wanted to prove her wrong. He wanted to show her that she was

everything

. Unfortunately, he’d never been good with words, and the only way he could think to show her was by making love to her.
 
And yes, he’d panicked after being in her bed for so long and not wanting to leave. It felt comfortable. It felt right, like he belonged beneath her sheets, in her space, in her body. He’d never felt that way in his entire life, and it scared the shit out of him because she was

Olivia

. His best friend. The woman who knew him better than anyone ever had.
 
And the longer he thought about it, the more he convinced himself she would wake up and tell him it hadn’t meant anything to her. Like with Brian, she would just be nice to him long enough for him to get the hint that they’d had fun, but that’s all they would ever have.
 
And Elliot couldn’t handle it. 
 
But what she’d said at Ed and Dana’s wedding? About it meaning something, and the fact that she didn’t think it was a mistake but said so because she thought it was what he wanted to hear?
 
Elliot didn’t like to take chances, at least not with his heart. Especially not after Kathy. But he needed to know. This was one story where he couldn’t read the last page and see how it would all turn out. The only way he’d ever know was if he did something about it.
 
He needed to find out if Olivia felt the same way as he did, and he blew it all up because he was afraid.
 
The realization pushed him into action, and Elliot found himself moving around his apartment, sliding on his shoes, and grabbing his keys. Then, before he knew it, he was out the front door. He took the subway into Manhattan and started out walking. But before he realized it, he ran toward Ed’s sisters’ building at full capacity. 
 
He wasn’t sure what he would find when he got there or what he’d say. If he saw Olivia on the arm of some other douchebag like Dean Porter, who would make her question her worth, he might lose his shit, punch the guy in the face, and then Olivia or Ed would have to arrest him.
 
The worst-case scenarios kept running through his mind as he approached the building. 
 
But then, by some stroke of luck, Olivia was walking out the front doors. 
 
Alone.
 
He felt it the second she saw him, and it was like he knew.
 
Elliot knew exactly what he needed to say, and he wouldn’t wait one more second to do it.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

At first, Olivia thought she was hallucinating.
 
Maybe Edgar had slipped a little something in that last glass of champagne because there was no way the man running full-speed down the sidewalk was Elliot. 
 
But then he got closer and closer, fighting his own momentum to slow down in front of the building. He wasn’t dressed for a party, and she was pretty sure he was wearing two different tennis shoes. 
 
She wanted to quip about it, but her brain was still trying to figure out how or why he was in front of her. 
 
And then he started talking.
 
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Elliot said, huffing and puffing clouds of steam out of his mouth, trying to catch his breath. “And the thing is, I love you.”
 
Olivia almost wished someone had been hiding in the bushes with a Polaroid camera because her face must have been priceless.
 
“What?” she asked.
 
“I love you,” Elliot said.
 
Olivia opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again.
 
“How do you expect me to respond to that?” Olivia asked.
 
Elliot shrugged his shoulders.
 
“How about you love me too?” he asked.
 
He made it sound like it was supposed to be easy. Like just because he decided he thought he loved her she should reciprocate. And something about that made her furious.
 
“How about ‘I’m leaving,’” Olivia said. “Feels like the perfect response to me.”
 
She turned her back on him and went in the opposite direction of her apartment, the precinct, and anywhere else she would go just to escape him.
 
“Doesn’t what I said mean anything?” Elliot called behind her.
 
Olivia spun on her heel, fury rising through her veins.
 
“Weren’t you the one who said sleeping together didn’t have to mean anything?” she asked. “Look, Elliot, I get it. I know it’s New Year’s Eve, and you’re lonely, right? Your best friend got married, and you’re still single, so you need someone to stand in and play the part until you don’t need her anymore. But the thing is, you can’t just show up here, tell me you love me, and expect that to make everything better. It doesn’t work that way.”
 
His expression fell.
 
“Then how does it work, Liv?” he asked. “Tell me how it works. If you’re the expert on love, then please enlighten me.”
 
“I don’t know, Elliot,” Olivia said. “Every time I thought I was in love, it failed. But I do know this isn’t how it works.”
 
Elliot cocked his head to the side and took a step toward her. Then another.
 
“Well, how about this way,” he said, lowering his voice just a little. “I love how much you love your job. I love that you’re able to help people who feel like the world is ending get some hope back. I love how you order everything on the side, and yet, somehow, you always pick off my plate when we go out to eat. I love the little nose scrunch you do when you laugh and look at me like I’m nuts.”
 
Olivia’s fight or flight was kicking in again. She didn’t like to hear these kinds of things about herself. She didn’t like sitting in an uncomfortable space where it felt like other people saw parts of her that she didn’t even know existed.
 
“I love that you love your friends. That even though you hated Ed you were willing to look past that because he made Dana so happy. I love how you’re so dedicated to being Fin’s partner and Maggie’s aunt. I love how after we spend the day together, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love that you’re the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night and the first person I want to see when I wake up in the morning.”
 
Olivia felt her breath catch in her throat. It was too much. This was all too much.
 
“And it’s not because I’m lonely or because one of my best friends got married, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve,” Elliot said, getting closer and taking her hands in his. “But Liv, I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
 
Olivia started shaking her head, but Elliot lifted her chin so she would have to look him in the eye.
 
“I realized it that night, Liv,” he said. “Remember I told you before that I never wanted to hold a woman for more than 30 seconds after sex? Well, I didn’t want to ever let you go, and it scared me shitless. I thought you would wake up, realize you made a huge mistake sleeping with me, and give me the polite brush-off like you did with Brian. I couldn’t take your rejection—”
 
“So you left before I could,” Olivia finished for him.
 
Elliot nodded.
 
Olivia could feel herself tearing up.
 
“This is just like you, El,” she said. “You say things like this, and you make it impossible for me to hate you. And I do, Elliot. I really, really hate you.”
 
“You do?” he asked.
 
“I hate how much you make me love you,” she said. “I hate how right you make this all feel when love isn’t supposed to be in the cards for me.”
 
“Who says?” Elliot asked. “Who says it’s not in the cards for you?”
 
“My mother,” Olivia said. “The universe.”
 
“Fuck ‘em,” Elliot said. “What do you want, Liv?” he asked.
 
Somewhere, or maybe everywhere, Olivia could hear people counting down to the New Year.
 
What did she want? If she could set her destiny, what would she choose? With the countdown, it felt like she was running out of time to decide. 
 
But when the horns and fire whistles blew, when fireworks boomed overhead, and “Auld Lang Syne” started playing out of windows and doorways, she knew.
 
Olivia wanted Elliot. Wanted to be loved by Elliot and love him back.
 
So she tipped up on her toes and kissed him hard, right on the mouth.
 
Actions always spoke louder than words anyway.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

9 Years Later

“Mommy, can we

please

have our story in the big bed?” Isabella asked. She’d been lobbying for a fairy tale under her mother’s king-sized, plush, weighted blanket since dinner.
 
“Yeah, Momma, pleaseeeee!” Eli, her twin brother, squealed as he chased their newly-toddling, hopefully soon-to-be adopted brother Noah around the couch.
 
Olivia was slightly at her wit's end, trying to corral three rambunctious kids for bedtime. Lucy swore they hadn’t had any sugar today, but Olivia felt like they were on a Halloween candy high.
 
Luckily, she didn’t have to think too hard about it because Elliot came swooping in from the kitchen and picked up the twins, one in either arm.
 
“C’mon, babe,” Elliot said. “You snag the little one. We’ll hold them hostage in our room.”
 
Olivia couldn’t help but shake her head and muffle a chuckle under her breath. She picked up Noah and kissed his forehead, following Elliot down the hall as he made dragon noises for the twins.
 
“You have no idea what kind of family you stumbled into, little man,” Olivia said, brushing Noah’s curls off his forehead. 
 
“Mommy, Mommy,” Isabella said, snuggling under the blanket. “Tell us the story of how you met Daddy.”
 
“I thought you wanted to hear a fairy tale?” Olivia asked, nestling Noah between Eli and Isabella in the middle of the bed.
 
“It

is

a fairy tale,” Isabella said. “You’re the princess, and Daddy is the prince.”
 
“Nuh-uh,” Eli said. “Daddy is the dragon, and Momma is the

Queen

.”
 
“Mumma,” Noah said, clapping his chubby hands together.
 
Olivia couldn’t help but smile.
 
“Well, if you really want to know, the first time Daddy and I met, we hated each other,” Olivia said. 
 
Isabella’s mouth dropped open.
 
“You did not,” she said.
 
“Yeah, Liv, you didn’t hate me,” Elliot said. “I hated you.”
 
“That’s not nice, Daddy,” Eli said. “Momma is the nicest, prettiest lady ever.”
 “Well, the second time we met, you didn’t even remember me,” Olivia said. 
“I absolutely remembered you at the airport,” Elliot said. “Do you really think I ever would have willingly spoken to Dean Porter again? No! I just wanted to see if

you

remembered

me

.”
 
Olivia smiled and shook her head. 
 “Well, the third time we met, we became friends,” Olivia said. 
“And we were friends for a long time,” Elliot said. “And then we weren’t.”
 
“And then we fell in love,” Olivia said. “And Daddy fell first.”
 
“I

said

it first,” Elliot said. “I still think you fell first.”
 
“Agree to disagree,” Olivia said. “It doesn’t really matter since three months later, we got married.”
 
“Only three months,” Elliot chuckled. 
 
“Well, 15 years and 3 months,” Olivia said. “But who’s counting.”
 
“Better than 25 or 30, I guess,” he said. “We sure had a great wedding, didn’t we?”
 
“The best,” Olivia said. “It was perfect. And that lemon crunch cake we had was to die for. Oh, I could go for a piece of that right now.”
 
“Yeah, and remember it had that creamy lemon sauce,” Elliot said. “On the side because you know not everybody likes it on the cake because it gets soggy.”
 
Olivia knew he was ribbing her, but she didn’t care.
 
“Particularly, the little crunchies get soggy if they soak up too much of the sauce,” Olivia said. “And you admitted that at the tasting.”
 
Elliot looked like he was going to respond, but then he glanced down between them in the bed. Eli, Isabella, and Noah were all already fast asleep, snuggled together under the weighted blanket.
 
“You glad we made it here, Liv?” Elliot asked.
 
She nodded.
 
“I spy a family,” she whispered.
 
“Can I hold you all night?” Elliot asked.
 
“If you really want to,” she said, snuggling in and tossing an arm across all three kids.
 
“I want to,” Elliot said, reaching around all of them to hold his whole family close. “I’m always going to want to.”
 
“Good,” Olivia said. 
 
“Love you,” Elliot whispered, sleep already invading his voice.
 
“Love you, too, El,” Olivia said before she let sleep come for her too.