Chapter Text
“Hell of a view,” Olivia said taking in the Manhattan vista from Elliot’s balcony, “Tell me again, just what are they paying you over at Organised Crime?”
Elliot grinned at her in response, it’s not the first time Liv has asked him that question since he moved to his new apartment over 9 months ago. She never would have imagined him here in this place 18 months ago. Back then he was nothing but a memory, another person who had left her. Disappeared off the face of the earth leaving her to build a life for herself without him in it. And she had. Quite successfully in fact.
“Rent control,” Elliot smirks back at her and she rolls her eyes at him.
“Mommy!” she turned to watch her son rushing on to the balcony, all excitement which is down, Liv is certain, to the Stabler kids shoving candy down him at every opportunity.
“Woah buddy,” Liv said, catching him in her arms, “Where’s the fire?”
“Can I go to the movies with Eli and the others this afternoon? They said we could if you said yes. Pleeeease Mommy!”
She raised her eyes at Maureen, the eldest of the Stabler offspring who had stepped on to the balcony behind Noah, “Well, if Noah wants to go we are all very happy to take him to see the new Disney movie.”
Liv looked at her quizzically for a moment until Eli’s shout from inside the apartment resolved her confusion, “They’re all desperate to go see it and just need a kid to give them an excuse!”
Maureen sighed dramatically, “This is true, Eli is no fun anymore now he’s a teenager. Do you mind Liv?”
“Not at all, as long as you are all happy to take him,” Liv grinned as her son jumped up and down in excitement and followed him back in to the apartment where the rest of the Stabler clan were waiting.
“And we’re going to get candy!” Noah exclaimed as he rushed to put his coat on and Liv raised her eyebrows, every time they were with the Stablers Noah would end up climbing the ceilings on a sugar high. They spoiled him rotten. And she loved that they did.
“Okay, not too much candy – Maureen….” Who was she kidding Maureen was the weakest willed when it came to Noah, Liv was looking forward to that baby being born. Revenge beckoned, “Wait – Eli, as by far the most responsible I’m entrusting you to make sure my kid does not eat his own weight in candy.”
The adult Stablers huffed in indignation but it was half hearted. They knew the truth.
“You can trust me Liv,” Eli smirked.
Olivia’s heart clenched as she watched all six of them bustle out of Elliot’s apartment. They had spent a lot of time together over the past 18 months. The first six, hellish and traumatic as they dealt with the devastating loss of Kathy and then Elliott’s PTSD. The Stabler kids had gravitated towards Liv, reached out to her not just for help with their father but for themselves too. And despite her own conflicted feelings about Elliot’s return Olivia was simply incapable of doing anything else but being there for them.
As the Wheatley case had come to a close and the family had finally begun to heal Olivia became less the 4th emergency service and more just part of the family. And they adored Noah. Maureen, Dickie and Kathleen had become regular babysitters, which had pleased poor Lucy no end, Lizzy was a regular visitor whenever she was in town for work and Eli had become part of the furniture. Often choosing to spend his evenings at Liv’s instead of home alone when his father worked late. Whenever Noah had a dance recital she had to remember to get 6 extra tickets these days.
She looked over her shoulder towards the balcony where Elliot had remained during the chaos of the kids leaving for the movies. While her relationship with his kids had become closer than ever with an ease that had surprised her, the relationship with her former partner was more complicated.
They were close, that was no doubt. They spent most weekends together and saw each other regularly during the week ferrying Eli back and forth. But it wasn’t the same. Liv huffed at herself. Like it ever could be the same. There was an invisible barrier between them that Liv was unwilling to lower even after all this time. She knew why. She thought he might have an idea but they’d never discussed it. Always unspoken. Maybe their relationship hadn’t changed after all.
“Your kids are going to turn my kid in to a diabetic,” Liv drawled at Elliot as she walked back out on to the balcony with a new bottle of wine and topped up his glass.
Elliot smiled at Liv, an easy relaxed smile and she marvelled at how at ease he was with this new dynamic they had created. They were family, and yet…not quite.
“They adore him,” he said.
“Well he is adorable,” Liv replied as she settled herself back down on the chair next to him.
“Like his Mom,” Elliot commented simply.
Olivia raised her eyebrows at him, “Adorable?! Please. Not a word that’s ever been used to describe me.”
Elliot laughed in to his wine glass, “An adorable pain in the ass?”
“Better,” Olivia replied and clinked her glass to his proffered one.
They settled in to an easy silence, watching the sights of Manhattan down below. They did this regularly too, at the end of an evening or family lunch they’d always gravitate to the other. Sitting in companionable silence or they’d chat about the kids or about work - both joint cases and separate ones. Liv liked to bounce ideas off him and she knew he liked to do the same. Sometimes he would speak about Kathy and their time in Rome, which had become easier for Liv to listen to. They’d gossip about their colleagues and Liv would tell stories about Rafa and others that he didn’t know but she was still close to. She remembered his shock as she told him about Alex, trying to reconcile the straight-laced ADA with some of her less than legal adventures these days.
Liv knew that they rarely talked about her. Outside of Noah or her work or her family it was a subject that, despite hesitant attempts by Elliot, she had always shut down. When Elliot had first returned there was no space to do so, his grief and trauma and that of his kids had sucked all oxygen out of the room. She knew he tried to rectify that but still she resisted. Perhaps she was scared of what she would say. She liked their new dynamic, her relationship with his kids, his relationship with Noah. It was good. And safe.
“You know I used to imagine us doing this when I lived in Rome,” Elliot interrupted her thoughts and she felt her defences reassert themselves. As much as she found it easier to talk about Rome these days, Rome in relation to *her* was a no go.
“Elliot,” she said warningly giving him the side eye that would fell a lesser man. But dammit, Elliot Stabler had never been a lesser man.
“What? Why can’t I say stuff like that? Why have you always got to shut me down?”
“Let’s not do this. We’ve had a nice afternoon, why can’t we just be normal people and do small talk?”
“We’ve never done small talk.”
He was right about that.
“How is it that we spend all this time together, most weekends, several evenings a week – we speak on the phone nearly every day and yet whenever…” he stopped seemingly flailing for the right words.
“I really do not want to do this. And neither do you,” Liv said warning him with her tone to drop it.
“Well I think you do. I know you Olivia and I think you need to.”
There was a beat and Liv could feel the red mist descend and she tried valiantly to control it.
“You know nothing about me. Don’t tell me what I need,” she all but whispered it. Furious with him and his audacity.
“What the hell?! Of course I know you, I know you better than you know yourself.”
“You don’t know a fucking thing about me.”
Elliot looked shocked at the venom in her tone and a part of Olivia, buried under the hurt and anger that had been there since Elliot had walked out without a backward glance, was shocked at herself too.
She tried to calm herself, she sat down her wine glass afraid that her shaking hands would drop it and got up, and walked to the rail of the balcony to settle herself.
“Liv –“ Elliot hesitatingly started but she turned round and silenced him with a look.
“You might have once. But that was a long time ago and you were gone a long time Elliot. A lot happened in ten years and you weren’t there. For any of it.”
“How many times can I say I’m sorry Liv?”
“I know you’re sorry. But that doesn’t erase what happened. You left. Without a backward glance.”
“And I told you why!” Elliott got up and stalked towards her, “I had to make a choice for my family and it was the right one for my family. The job was killing me and my marriage and my kids. I had to make a choice and I made the only choice I could.”
“And to hell with those of us that were left behind?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Elliot pleaded with her but she knew he still didn’t understand.
“You don’t think I would have understood? Hell Elliot if you had told me that to save your family you needed to leave I would have driven you to the airport myself!”
“Liv,” he started but she was on a roll now.
“You were my family. You and Kathy and the kids were all I had. When you left you didn’t just take away the most important person in my life, you took away my family too. I always put you and your family first. Always. And you cut me out like I meant nothing.”
“You know that’s not true. I told you, if I had seen you or spoken to you I would not have been able to leave. I had to go. It was all or nothing.”
“And you left me with nothing,” she choked out and she watched as Elliot’s eyes widened in shock.
“I’ve loved those kids since they were in diapers and you took,” her voice broke and she tried to swallow a sob, “You took it all away. You were my everything, the one thing in my life I had total and complete faith in, and then you became just like everyone else that has ever left me or let me down.”
She knew that pierced him as she watched him stagger back to his chair and cradle his head in his hands.
“This is why I didn’t want to have this conversation. No good can come from it.”
“No we need to talk it through. I can feel it Liv, we can be having the best time with our kids and yet it’s like it’s radiating off you in waves.”
“What is?”
“It’s like you’re waiting for me to run, so you keep me at arms length. Close but not too close. Friends but not quite good friends. You don’t trust me not to leave again.”
“Elliot I don’t trust you not to break my heart again.”
“What can I do? How can I show you how sorry I am? How can I get you to trust me again?”
“You can’t.”
“Liv, please,” his begging her broke her heart but she refused to crumble. She promised herself she would only let him in so far. And for her own sanity she needed to keep that promise.
“I know you’re sorry and I know you believe what you are saying but…I don’t know how to explain it to you. I had to literally rebuild myself and my life. And I’ve been through things Elliot. Things that I can’t….I was faced with the most unimaginable, unspeakable horrors and all I wanted was you. And you. weren’t. there. And I had to learn how to put myself back together again."
She paused, giving herself a moment to collect herself, "But I survived. And then I learned how to thrive. I found Noah, or Noah found me. I found a love and a family of my own. I have a family now Elliot, if you turn around and walk out the door tomorrow, I have my family. A family of my choosing, my son, my friends. The people who even when they left didn’t leave me. Fin, Amanda, Sonny, Rafael. I’ve had good relationships, with good men, who loved me. I’ve even made Captain. Good things have happened to me that have had nothing to do with you. And I can’t go back to before. I can’t need you like that again. I won’t do it to myself, and I won’t do it to my son.”
“So where does that leave us?” Elliot whispered to her, his voice constricted with pain. And she hated that she was the one that had inflicted that on him. Rollins would say he deserved it but despite her hurt and anger and even though she wanted to keep him at arms length – she never, ever wanted to be the person that caused him pain.
“Where we are. We are friends. I spend as much time with you as I do my squad these days, if not more. And I like that you are back in my life. I love your kids and I love watching Noah with them all and being part of that Stabler family. But I cannot, will not, give more of myself to you than I can handle.”
Elliot nodded, almost defeatedly, “I get it. I do. But you gotta know I’m not going to want to stop working for you to trust me again. I want to be the person you rely on, that you trust and I will spend the rest of my life proving that to you if I have to.”
Liv sighed and looked at him. The man that had once been her entire world, “Don’t you see Elliot? When it comes down to it, I don’t need you to be that person anymore.”