Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It’s the middle of June, when he puts in for vacation.

Except - he doesn’t really put it in for himself. 

“It’s a new initiative,” Bell tells him. She sits across her desk from him in the early summer morning light, ignoring the (non fat milk, full sugar vanilla and never, ever iced) latte he’d brought her in an effort to wiggle out of this discussion. 

She slides the calendar across the desk to him, then settles back in her desk chair. He ignores it, and leans in, head shaking, eyes narrowed. He grumbles - loud enough for only her to hear, because he’s not going to buck her command, not after the last six months and not in front of the whole task force - and reaches for his own paper cup full of black coffee. 

“From who? This is — ”

“From me, Elliot,” Bell answers. She shuts him down, then goes on immediately. “This task force has been through the fucking wringer this year - you most of all - don’t argue, let me finish — ”

She dismisses his mouth falling open, quiets the words he’s about to say with a wave of her hand.

“ — and no one will take a day off,” she finishes. “People need a break. Everyone of you needs to take a real break.” 

When he does start to argue, when he starts to remind her that he took two days off last week when Randall flew back to Florida in the middle of the week, she shakes her head. 

“That was after a ten day stretch, Elliot,” she reminds him. “You still came out in the red on hours worked.” 

He waits exactly five seconds before he starts in again. He keeps his voice low, still, as he tries to convince her. 

“You’re - fuck, you aren’t wrong about everyone needing a break, Sarge,” he tries. He already knows it’s useless, and when he sees one eyebrow quirk up, and the hand bringing her coffee to her lips pause, he knows exactly how this will go. He’ll try to elude this, and she won’t let him at all, and because he respects her, he will, actually, listen. 

Still.

He at least has to try. 

A mandatory break is the last thing he needs, and a a mandatory whole fucking week off - five business days with two on each side; nine days to be gone, only called in if the city itself is on fire - will drive him insane. A mandatory week off is going to make him insane; leave him too much time to do nothing but think. 

“I get the breaks I need though,” he tells her. 

It’s not a lie. He does get breaks. His breaks are small - time with his mother, time with his son and his son’s girlfriend; time at the end of the day where he sits in his car for an extra twenty minutes and he talks to a brown-haired, brown-eyed NYPD Captain who's doing the same - and he takes them. They’re small breaks, but they’re fine. 

“I don’t need any — ”

“It’s mandatory, Elliot,” she cuts him off again. She puts a fingertip on the top of the big, black lettering that says JULY, and she slides the calendar even closer this time. “This team needs to take their time off.” 

“I take my time off,” he huffs. “I know when I need to step back.” 

When all she gives him is that same look, right before she tilts her coffee up, he shakes his head. 

“I do,” he tells her. 

Across from him she sighs, and sets down the cup. She leans in, forearms resting on the desk; eyes on him and she says something so familiar he almost does a double take. 

“My job is to make sure my team is good, Elliot,” she tells him. Her voice is gentler, quiet, and her eyes soften as she tells him. 

“And this is how I’m doing it.”

She keeps her gaze on his for a moment. He sees the concern there - the concern that’s been there from the start of this; along with the trust and everything else - as she studies him. He really did get lucky four years ago. The NYPD is filled with shit people who don’t care about anything but power and control, but he’d gotten one of the few who actually cared about people. 

Elliot nods, finally. 

“And, look— ”

Ayanna starts again, voice louder now that she knows he won’t keep bucking it. 

“I’m including myself in the rotation too,” she lets him know. “I’m trying to beat Denise and her new - whatever.”

She stops herself. Elliot looks up, waiting for the explanation.

“Jack wants to go to this water park,” she tells him. 

“It’s the talk of the preschool - some place with wolf ears and an ice cream place right in there - and if I don’t take him, then Denise and her new girlfriend will, so — ”

She shakes her head. He can imagine her with wolf ears on, sitting in a wave pool while her pre-schooler tries to swim as far as he can. He can imagine how loud it will be, how cranky a four year old gets in a huge, over stimulating water park. 

“I still have to figure out what the place is called, but I’m taking the last week in June,” she says. 

Elliot pulls the calendar forward, finally. He’s got nothing on his plate until next fall; at least nothing he needs any time off for. Shit, he thinks, he probably doesn’t even need the time off in the fall. The last thing Eli and Becky will probably want is some know it all dad trying to tell them what to do. 

He starts printing his name across the first week in July. It’s a holiday week, anyway. He’ll be off at least one of the days. 

“Great Wolf Lodge,” he mutters as he does it. Every box in that first week of July is his now; the time off he’ll spend the next two weeks dreading. 

When Bell looks up from her coffee, eyebrows raised, he sets the pen down and shrugs. 

“Great Wolf Lodge is the name of the place,” he tells her. He explains how Maureen and Carl had taken the boys there last summer and from the stories they told, the place was a lot. Kids everywhere, high on sugar and soda and the thrill of a place just for them. Strung out parents who stop counting the times they swipe their wristband. He embellishes, of course. 

A little bit of retaliation for the forced vacation she’s making him take. 

When he’s done, he taps her pen on the desk and pushes away from her desk. He gives her a shit-eating grin, laughing as he walks out her door. 

“At least one of us has a shot at enjoying our break.”

—

It’s the middle of June, when she realizes she’s going to waste a whole two weeks of paid time off.

Except - she doesn’t even realize it herself. 

It’s Curry - Renee Curry, who is proving herself to be an asset everyday; who tries a little too hard but ultimately, who she really, really hopes sticks around - that points it out inadvertently over lunch in the break room. Not even lunch, not really; as much as Olivia unpacking the Greek salad and Diet Coke Bruno had brought back for her from the brown paper bag, with every intention to take it back to her office to eat.

She has work to do, and she has two text messages that had just pinged through sitting on her phone waiting to be answered, and both of those things mean she intends to sit at her desk, and eat every sun dried tomato and every Kalamata olive, and leave about one third of the dressing drenched kale in the plastic clamshell it came in. 

She walks right into a discussion, though, in that break room. 

“We’ve only got a month left to use it,” Curry’s explaining to Fin. She’d gotten a salad too, something brighter and greener, sprinkled with chicken and Olivia is distracted by that for a moment. She’s only half paying attention to the back and forth between her two officers. “July first, or we lose it.” 

“You’re wrong,” Fin answers around a mouthful of what she assumes is a club sandwich. 

“The old PTO still rolls over,” he goes on. He takes a sip of his Coke - his real Coke, in a bright red can, and god, how long has it been since she’s had a real Coke - and he shakes his head. He’s adamant, and he’s grinning, ecstatic about besting Curry at something.

 “Vacation resets on July first, but — ”

“You’re wrong,” Curry interrupts. There’s a forkful of chicken and lettuce and that bright green dressing speared on the tines of her fork and she circles that as she shakes her head. It’s a Green Goddess salad, she realizes. It looks so much better then hers. Olivia can see the grin the other woman holds back as she continues. 

“PTO used to roll over,” she tells Fin. “For three years after the switch, but we have until — ”

She checks the screen of her phone, pretending to check. 

“We have until the end of July of this year to use it or lose it,” she finishes. 

She does smile then, lips twisting to the side just a little. Olivia just keeps watching, biting back her own smile for Fin’s sake. She knows Curry is right. When the NYPD rolled over their vacation system during the pandemic - the old PTO system ushered out in favor of a vacation/sick/holiday system that ultimately didn’t change a thing for people who barely take any of those three things - they gave veteran members with huge PTO banks three years to use their surplus or cash it out. 

“You can cash out two weeks of it at least,” Curry offers to Fin, grinning. Across the table from the former IAB Captain, her Sergeant looks less than amused and Olivia grabs her Diet Coke and her salad from the counter, taking her leave with a shake of her head. 

“Cash it out, Fin,” Olivia calls over her shoulder on her way out. 

“Then you can use your vacation to take Phoebe somewhere nice for once.” 

She’s back in her office a few hours later - midway through picking apart that salad, halfway through clearing a huge block of emails and considering, still, how to answer those two text messages - when she thinks to check her own bank of PTO. It’s out of curiosity, mostly. There’s no way she’s going to be able to use it. She’ll cash it out; tuck it away in something responsible. Maybe half to Noah’s account for college; the other half deposited into the pension plan for when she finally retires from this job.

If she ever retires from this job. There’s a joke Fin makes every so often - when he’s trying to be good, and when he’s trying to urge her to get away from this place - about her refusing to leave; just slowly becoming part of the paint and the hardware someday in the precinct. 

‘Maybe the coffee pot,’ she’d quipped last time. ‘Just me, brewing those cheap shitty grounds you keep bringing.

The joke had fallen flat. 

“Jesus,” she murmurs as she clicks into the intranet portal that the NYPD uses to track vacation time. She knew it was bad, but she’d thought maybe she had two weeks and some change. Enough to cash out, and a little to lose. 

It’s four weeks though. 

She’ll lose two full weeks of PTO. She can’t cash out all four, and there’s just no way she tells herself - not right now, not after the last six months - that she can take two full weeks off between now and the end of next month. 

Olivia sighs, resigned, and clicks through the request to cash out the two weeks she can. She thinks about a week off in the city with Noah; the money she’d save not sending him to some ridiculous day camp that they both know he’s too old for. She could take him out of the city, even; a long weekend at the shore; a trip where they could both just relax.

Except - he’s signed up; booked solid until August. Deposits on camps have been paid for months. 

If she had just a little more time, she lies to herself.

She shuts her laptop. 

She eyes her squad room. 

They’re all clearing out for the afternoon; slowly heading home to families and girlfriends and drinks with friends, and this is the time of day she likes best to do exactly what she’s about to do. The time in between work and home; that liminal space that usually involves rushing and traffic and a pit in her stomach as she sits behind the wheel of her car and thinks about how to fit everything in.

Not lately, though. 

Lately, this is the time where she slides open his contact as she gathers her stuff. Lately, this is the time where she considers something he’s said - something he’s typed out in a text earlier that day; or a comment he made the last time they talked - and thinks of how exactly she’ll answer. Lately, this is the time where she walks slowly to the elevator with her bag on her shoulder, and she pulls her lip through her teeth as she boards it, and considers. 

Lately, it’s just like today. 

She stares at the two text messages he’d sent earlier this afternoon as she walks to the elevator. Two thinly veiled excuses to keep in contact; to stay connected, and she smiles as she reads them again. She could tell what they were as soon as she’d read them, and she’d been in no real hurry to text him right back.

They both know how it plays out. How it’s been playing out - ironically enough - since the day she’d called him to let him know she’d lent Eileen Flynn the thing that meant the most to her. 

Since lately. 

Lately, they text. Lately they call and they play catch up and it’s not like they didn’t talk, since he came back in January. 

They did. 

They did, but lately, it’s different. 

‘You make it to lunch today, Benson?’ he’d typed out around eleven. Two days ago they’d talked while she pushed a cart through the aisles of Whole Foods; muttering about putting too much food in her cart because she hadn’t eaten since seven that morning. She’d dropped a box of two bite chocolate chip cookies in as she told him about her day. 

They’d stayed on the line as she opened them up in the front seat of her SUV and told him the two bite estimate wasn’t quite right. 

 ‘Or you just eating those two and a half bite cookies again?’ 

His second text came through right after the first and for a moment, when she’d seen it, she’d tried to swallow back the smile. She’d tried to stifle it, even sitting there, alone at her desk. She’d tried to push back on that old, old instinct that told her she couldn’t - shouldn’t - enjoy this. 

Then, she’d remembered. 

She’d remembered, and she’d bit her lip as she’d smiled. At him, and his words, at his joke that she’d roll her eyes at, if he was standing there in front of her. She’d grinned, and she’d let herself look forward to later that day, when she could tell him that she had, actually, eaten lunch. 

She had eaten one of those two (and a half) bite cookies for breakfast, though. 

This is how it’s been, lately. 

Lighter - lighter, somehow - despite a heavy year behind both of them; and a seemingly always heavier present. 

Now, the elevator doors ding open. She stares down at his words as she walks - at Elliot’s texts, sent almost six hours ago - and she lets herself enjoy this feeling right now. The little bit of anticipation; the pleasant way her stomach flip flops every time she sees his name right there, lately never very far down in the list of recent calls. 

Elliot Stabler.

It wasn’t easy to let herself enjoy him like this. 

(It isn’t, always; still). 

She presses down on his name as she draws close to the driver’s side of her SUV. It rings, and rings, and rings again as she unlocks it and drops her bag on the seat and she starts to resign herself to a missed moment. They happen - on both of their ends - and every time that they do, she reminds herself that healing is admitting she’s disappointed in missing him as much as anything else. 

“Hey - hey — ”

He answers before the fourth ring, breathless and harried sounding as he goes on. He clears his throat before he goes on. 

“Sorry, I was just in the middle of a shower,” he tells her and she hears the shudder of the glass door as he pulls it closed; the echo of his voice in the small, tiled space and she sits down heavy on the leather of her front seat. 

“It’s - oh god, Elliot.”

She laughs, because it’s easier - maybe, definitely - to laugh it off then to linger too long in the way that the thought of Elliot standing in his steam filled bathroom; haphazardly clamoring out of the shower to dive for his phone makes her feel. 

“It could have waited, Elliot,” she chides him now. 

She hears his low, quiet laugh as she goes on. 

“You didn’t have to cut your shower short.” 

She presses the button by her steering wheel, and the engine turns over. It transfers him over to Bluetooth, and the volume is loud; left high up from this morning when she’d dropped Noah off and kept Pop2k on all the way to work. 

He must have turned her on speaker, too. 

“Eh, there’s uh — ”

She can hear everything, now, when it’s this loud. She can hear Elliot’s feet on the tile floor, and the small rattle of metal as he reaches for what she assumes is the towel. 

“It doesn’t take that long, anyways,” he tells her as she reverses out of her space, and she wishes she’d stayed in park for a few moments longer. It’s Elliot, she tells herself. At one point, she’d seen him walk around in a towel in the locker room more times than she could even remember. 

It shouldn’t unnerve her. 

On the other end of the line, she hears him exhale. His voice echoes again in the small room. 

“It’s not like I have hair to wash,” he jokes. 

She laughs - loudly, appreciatively, maybe a little too much - and god. She really likes this, with him. She likes this place that they’re in, this place where he makes her smile. It took them so long to get here. She’s trying so hard to not just appreciate it, but let herself enjoy it, too. 

She’s trying to let herself live in it. 

“Yeah,” she acknowledges. Her stomach is still dancing, still doing that not unpleasant twist at the thought of all this, but it’s starting to settle now.

“I guess you do have an advantage there.”

There’s a flurry of noise - a grumble under his breath about wet fingers on the screen; a small whoosh of air as he brings his phone to his ear - and then she’s off speaker, but his voice is still there, loud and filling up the space of her car in that low, heavy timbre as she drives out of the garage, and he admits. 

“And, I — ”

He hesitates. 

She waits. She hears the shuffle of his feet on his floor, the pull of a drawer on the bathroom vanity. She can almost hear the wheels turning in his mind as he thinks about how far he can push this. When he breaks the silence, his voice is serious, hoarse and low. 

“I didn’t want to miss your call,” he admits. 

She feels the flush on her cheeks immediately. She breathes out. She hasn’t turned on the air, she realizes. It’s June, and the air in her car is stifling and she reaches for it now as she pulls into traffic. She turns the dial all the way to the right, blasting the forced air; jamming her finger on the button. 

“I…”

She hits the button again, too hard, and she clears her throat, trying to figure out how, exactly, to answer that, but Elliot is already pressing on. 

“We’ve had enough missed calls, lately,” he tells her, and his voice is so, so, so quiet, the gentle teasing from a moment ago forgotten. His words are simple enough, and the truth, and said exactly how she needs to hear them. 

“We have,” she admits softly. 

It’s silent for a moment. It gives her a moment to gather herself, and she’s grateful. 

The traffic, when she pulls out onto the street, is busy. Horns keep blaring; and it’s astonishing, really, how fast she can find herself stuck in gridlock. She hears the creak of Elliot’s bathroom door opening; the pad of his bare feet on the floor. After that it’s the click of another door, and then Elliot’s voice is muffled as he presses the phone into his shoulder and asks.

“So what’d you have?” 

Olivia blinks out of the moment, looking up at the red light. His question - so casually asked, voice back to normal; gruff but chipper and even, after he’d just said what he’d said - makes her shake her head. She thinks she knows what he means, but she tries to buy herself one more moment as the light changes to green, and she presses on the gas once again. 

“I’m sorry, I — what did I have?” she asks. 

“For lunch,” he clarifies. His voice is still muffled. She wishes he’d put her back on speakerphone, so she wouldn’t have to think about exactly why it’s muffled, or where his phone is. 

“Or did you just skip it again?” 

Olivia tries not to picture a towel falling to the floor. She tries not to think about the late afternoon light stretching across the harsh lines of muscles; the rays of the summer sun making shadows where the cuts are the deepest; etched into his skin like he’s made of steel. 

“I, uh — ”

Traffic slows again in front of her. She inches her car forward as she tells him. The little electric car in front of her taps on its brakes - flashing red, then black, then red again - as she watches, and tries to think about lunch. Lunch, and traffic, and getting across town. 

“Bruno picked up lunch,” she tells him. Elliot makes a low noise, a still smothered mmmhmmm, waiting for her to go in, and fuck. 

It’s not working. 

It’s not like she never pictured it - more so lately, because there’s that part of all this, too; somewhere in admitting healing has happened and that she likes this , she’s allowed herself to admit that there’s wanting, too - but she’s on her way to pick up her kid. 

“I had a Greek salad,” she tells him. It should be the most mundane discussion in the fucking world, her lunch, but they’ve gone from missed connections to her mind thinking about Elliot, bare-assed and drying off in the —

Jesus. 

She needs to not do this right now. 

 “It was — ” 

Traffic starts moving again in front of her. The sea of red tail lights are slowly dispersing; sliding into a newly opened lane. Olivia taps the gas and signals to move into the left lane. Traffic keeps flowing now, moving past the bottleneck and she breathes as her mind sharpens back into focus. 

“It wasn’t good,” she says, wrinkling her nose, thinking about the flavorless salad she’d chosen. The same one she always got, every time. “It wasn’t bad, it was just — ”

She makes a noise, a resigned eh, and she hears Elliot laugh. 

“Same old, same old huh?” he asks and she should hate that he knows her so well. 

“Yep,” she says; voice dry. 

Elliot’s chuckle is warm; thick and gravelly as she hears him move again. She hears the rustle of pants, the clank of a belt. She hears Elliot breath into the phone as he tugs on his belt. 

His voice is relaxed as he goes on. 

“You gotta try something else next time,” he tells her. 

Traffic is picking up now and she should probably focus. She should probably tell him to get going to wherever he’s going, and to not worry so much about leaping for the phone when she calls. 

Instead, she tells him, as she drives through a green light. 

“I probably should.” 

Elliot’s smiling, she can tell, as he answers.

“At the least, you have to keep those cookies close by,” he tells her. His voice is unmuffled now, phone pressed back up to his ear. It is that exact deep, gruff timbre that she thinks about a little too much when she’s not on the phone with him at all. 

“Mix it up a little, don’t you think?” he asks. In front of her, traffic was fully open now. Cars move easily, and there’s hardly any back up at all. The little electric car in front of her has disappeared, weaving in and out other cars, making it’s way to its destination. She might make it to Noah early for once. 

An anomaly. 

Elliot is still talking, and he makes the smallest grunt; an almost laugh to himself as he goes on. She can picture him so clearly right now, scooping up his keys and getting ready to leave; laughing at his own words.

 “For example, Benson — ”

There’s the jangle of the keys, she thinks. 

“I had the best chicken club sandwich of my life today,” he tells her. When she starts to protest - starts to make that noise she makes when they talk about one of her least favorite lunches - he stops her. 

“C’mon, hear me out Liv,” he tells her; and he’s so earnest - about a fucking chicken club - that she does. She listens as she drives, and he tells her about how they shred the chicken really fine, and mix the bacon right in. How fresh the lettuce and tomato were and how he added artichoke hearts when they suggested it and it made the whole thing sing. 

It’s silly, how easy this feels lately. Two years ago she couldn’t catch her breath when he was in the room, and now she thinks if he asked her to come try this goddamn chicken club sandwich with him - she would. 

Gladly. 

“I’ll have to try it,” she tells him when he’s done. She waits for it for a moment - hears his small inhale over the ding of his car door opening; hears the hesitation as he thinks about it - and she’s not sure how she feels when it doesn’t come. 

“You will, yeah,” he answers. 

Not quite yet, she thinks. 

They stay on the line as he keeps getting dressed; as she moves through the summer afternoon traffic on the way to pick up her son. They move on from lunch - right into his son’s girlfriend morning sickness and late night cravings (ginger pops and lo mein noodles) and Randall’s first day on a run with Elliot (a disaster, but ‘nice to spend time where he’s quiet) and her disappointment fades slowly. 

She can feel it coming, soon enough. 

It’s so different lately, how easy this feels. 

It’s much, much later that night when she sits down again at her counter and opens her laptop back up. It’s after an average, ordinary - an extremely routine - night. After dinner has been dished out, and after she’s sat on the couch with her son; and after she’s stood in his doorway, and pressed a kiss to the shower damp curls on his head, she opens her laptop, the intention to work on her mind. 

The web page displayed connects automatically. She’d never exited it this afternoon - had just clicked her laptop shut instead - and the intranet portal is open now, glowing and waiting for her to put in her password. 

On a whim, she types in her login information. 

She sits for a moment, staring at the excess still left in her PTO bank. She has no real use for the time off, not really, she tells herself. She won’t be able to really go anywhere or do anything. Noah is booked solid for most days of the week all the way through July, and if she leaves town, the chances that her team would need her will go right through the roof. 

Still. 

Elliot’s words from earlier play back in her mind. A year ago, she might have rolled her eyes at the idea of taking advice from him, but tonight she thinks about them. 

‘Mix it up a little, don’t you think.’ 

She submits the request for the first week in July before she can stop herself. 

Then - because she can, because the Commissioner won’t care, and because she has the power as an NYPD Captain to do it herself - she approves the request. She has no idea what she’ll even do with the time, but she has it now. 

An extra week off just for her. 

There, she thinks. Something different for once. 

—

The thing is, he is going to ask her. 

Eventually. 

He was going to, actually. He was going to do it, but he’d hesitated. He’s not sure if it’s the heavy shit he’s dealing with himself - his mother’s worsening memory, Joey’s addiction and subsequent exit stage left, the unexpected and sudden grandchild on the way - telling him it’s a horrible time to subject Olivia Benson to him; or if it was a moment of apprehension.

He got gun-shy, though.

He was going to do it last week, four days ago, the last time they talked, talked, not just these sporadic little clusters of texting back and forth; where it’s go, go, go from both of them until life or the job interferes and it falls silent for a while until one of them picks it back up. It’s 70/30, he’d say - he’s usually the one to start the text chain back - but he’s not complaining at all. 

She’s a busy woman. 

Her schedule is - well, her schedule is insane, he knows that - and he meant to do it that day. He’d decided to do it. He’d meant to talk about that fucking chicken club sandwich; and then he’d meant to take a deep breath and he’d meant, maybe, to be sort of cute about it. Smug and cocky and the Elliot she knows. He’d had a line planned in his head, even. He’d tell her about the trendy little cafe that Lizzie had told him about - ‘right on the corner of Avenue B and East 12th’ - a place that looked like a place two baby boomers would absolutely avoid - and then he’d be real smooth about it. 

‘I’ll buy, if you come for lunch tomorrow. If I text you the address, you think you can find your way there? I know the compass is gone, but — ’

He’d meant to do that. 

Instead, he waits four days.

He’s sitting at his counter now, listening to Olivia and eyeing the stack of case files he’d not so steadily snuck out of the bottom drawer of the file cabinet today in the corner of the task force office. The ones Bell had shaken her head when she’d seen, eyebrows raised as she’d asked:

“You don’t want to do anything with your family on your week off, Stabler?” 

The truth is, he did try. For once, he’d absolutely tried. He’d told Eli to plan a few days, and he’d asked Maureen about taking the boys for a full, long day and night in the city and he’d been rejected - soundly - by everyone. Eli and Becky were headed to Florida for that holiday week, taking advantage of his brother’s overzealous generosity and a quiet week in his condo so Eli could study, and she could sit in the sun. The twins had camps that week, Maureen explained. LEGO League in the morning, then Carl has to leave on his lunch and take them to some sort of nature in the suburbs something in the afternoons. 

“I had to book summer camps in January, Dad,” his daughter had told him. “It’s cutthroat, we can’t just cancel.” 

His mother had shrugged and said she’d probably have time. If Gabriel hadn’t made plans, she’d told him. 

Now, he’s sitting at his kitchen counter, and he’s eyeing the little magnetic paper calendar stick on the refrigerator door. He's listening to Olivia - he is, genuinely; she is telling him how Fin keeps wearing this leather jacket that Phoebe had bought him despite the fact that he hates it, and it’s already in the high eighties most days; all because he’d fucked up when he’d opened it and made a face - and he’s staring at that first week in July and that’s when he does it.

Not when he means to; not when he’d decided to do it four days ago. Instead he does it right as she finishes up, as he’s eyeing that first week in July. He does it almost as soon as he’s done laughing about Fin sweating all the way through his shirt, and he does it not at all smoothly. Not smug, not cocky; not that Elliot he’d planned to be at all. 

“Let me take you to lunch next week,” he blurts out. 

On the other end of the line, he hears her laugh die on her lips. 

He does it impulsively, and badly, and he does it because he has been sitting here, staring at that week on his calendar and feeling ridiculously melancholy and because the thought of her - of Olivia’s pretty face, sitting across from him in her work outfit, loose curls by the side of her face - taking a break and eating lunch with him would mix it up for both of them. He’d meant to say it like that, to use that exact pitch that he’d started four days ago, but all he can do at the moment is try desperately hard not to flounder. 

He exhales.

Olivia stays silent.

“July first — ” he repeats. 

He pushes up off the barstool, the legs dragging loudly on the floor, and he starts to move through his place. He can’t tell if she’s being completely still, or if the blood rushing to his ears is too loud to hear her even shift in her chair. 

“It’s a Monday - and the cafe does that club sandwich thing on Mondays,” he tells her. 

On the other end of the line he hears her weighted pause continue. He swears now he can hear her shift in her chair; the roll of the wheels of her chair on the floor, the creaking noise the back of her seat makes when she arches back into it. Like she’s sitting up straighter, suddenly uncomfortable. 

He fucked up, he thinks, and he tries to - not dial it back, because he doesn’t want to dial it back at all, he wants to see her - but he tries to lighten it, at least. 

He exhales, and starts to ask. 

“What - a week is too much warning or — ”

Finally, he hears Olivia. She interrupts him with a low huff of laughter. 

“No, it’s - a week is hardly too much, Elliot,” she breathes out. The not after all this time remains unspoken. Relief is like aloe on a sunburn, his whole body suddenly soothed. He can hear the smile still in her voice, and he can’t help it when his own lips quirk up; a smile pointed out the back window of his place, directly at the overgrown weeds in the back of his home. He needs to go, needs to get in the car and drive. 

He needs to get over to his mother’s for dinner. 

“You just…” she trails off. 

“I caught you off guard,” he supplies.

“You caught me off guard,” she confirms. She doesn’t sound upset about it at all. Surprised, maybe, taken aback enough about the suddenness of his invitation that it rendered her silent, but not upset. 

Not at all. 

“But…” 

Her voice is quiet, warm, and there is a softness to it that’s as much a balm as any words that she says. The shift in the way they talk to each other lately is so clear. For so long, it was about making sure the other one was merely surviving, and nine times out of ten, the concern was pointed at him. 

It feels different now.

“I think I can make myself free with that much warning,” she says. Then, with a smile in her voice that he can feel, she says softly, in that low, low voice that he has to force himself to stop thinking about it sometimes after they hang up. 

“I guess we never did get to finish our last meal together did we?” 

He can picture her so perfectly right now. The not at all shy grin that she’d shot him last May when she’d grabbed a fry from his plate; her eyebrow raised, almost daring him. Moments before disaster, sure, but he remembers that split second - the flash of teeth, the way her eyes danced - as much as anything else. 

“We didn’t, no,” he answers. “And I, uh - I’ve been meaning to ask, but…it just felt like so much time had passed,” he tells her. He props his forearm up on the window that faces the back. “And I know that’s on me — ”

“It’s not just on you,” she interrupts. She goes on quickly. “I mean - the undercover thing, maybe, but…” 

He hears the click of her heels on the floor. Slow, steady, and then the small, small whoosh of her door closing. The click of her heels again; and then the sound of her settling on something in her office. That chair, maybe, in the back corner of her office; big and oversized and inviting. 

“It’s been a long year, Elliot,” she murmurs. “Let’s just - get lunch.” 

It feels so unlike the last four years, if he’s being honest; the way that they talk to each other now. It feels familiar, and wholly different, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to agree. To keep them there, in this space for one moment longer. 

Before he can, it’s Olivia, this time, lightening the mood. A little avoidance, maybe - steering around the deep places - but he’ll take it, if it means she’ll stay on the line. 

And if it means she’ll get lunch with him. 

“This club sandwich better be the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life, though,” she mutters, wry and sharp and Elliot opens his eyes. He blinks, the afternoon sunlight blinding him slightly. 

“If I have to wait a whole week to get it.” 

He wonders if she can feel the same golden ray of sunshine he’s standing in right now too. 

—

It takes her two more days to tell Fin about her week off. 

It occurs to her that she hasn’t told anyone. Not Noah, not the Commissioner, not any one member of her team; not Amanda - not even Mrs. Kowalski next door, who keeps an eye out for Noah in this grand experiment she’s trying this summer where her son is allowed to fend for himself for an hour or two after summer day camps. 

She hasn’t told Elliot, either. 

Which, she tells herself, is really not that abnormal. 

Elliot and she may have talked about the ins and the outs of the Greek salad she had for lunch; the late night, whiskey filled conversation he had with his brother about their father’s indiscriminate verbal abuse, but she hasn’t brought it up for some reason. 

She hasn’t told him, yet, about her week-long staycation. The one that starts - technically, although the pay period actually starts on the Sunday before, if she’s being overly precise - on the day they’re scheduled for lunch. 

Chicken club sandwiches after a long, long year; on the first day of her staycation. 

(Iced tea maybe, too, he’d told her. They do those fun ones; he’d told her, the ‘real yuppy things like yuzu flower flavor or elderberry.’ 

She didn’t tell him yuzu was a fruit, not a flower, and that she’s had it a million times before).

The only person she has told is her hairdresser. She’d texted this morning, and evidently, he’d decided to pick up the phone and actually call her back. She hadn’t thought it was an SOS level text; hadn’t thought she was quite at the point where she was ready to admit she wanted highlights and a trim and something lighter, and that it needed to be done before Monday because of lunch with Elliot Stabler, but she supposes the ‘need something ASAP, can you squeeze me in? I can be flexible’ wasn’t…non-emergent. 

And she supposes that maybe she can admit - maybe after she’d left work last May, and re-curled her hair and freshened her makeup to meet Elliot on the library steps - that it isn’t not about wanting to make eyes go big; make his heart race a little bit when he sees her after a year.

Now, Mark is on the line, and she hadn’t expected a call. She’d expected a text, a few back and forths; her phone in her hand as she checked her Google calendar for conflicts. 

“I could fit you in on — ”

She balances the phone between her shoulder and cheek, reaching for the desk calendar she never actually uses. When the phone starts to slide, she switches it to speakerphone and opens her calendar app to put it in; and it’s right at that moment when Fin strolls in, unannounced, with two coffees in hand. 

On the other end, Mark finishes his thought. 

“ — Monday at 9 AM? Highlights and a cut?” 

Even with her chin tilted down, her eyes on her phone, she can see Fin’s eyebrows raise in front of her. She ignores it, even as he slides himself into the seat. He puts the plastic cup of iced coffee in front of her, and he settles back into his chair and he waits, watching and listening, while she confirms. She takes Mark off of speaker phone, rushing him off. 

“See you - yep, yes, see you Monday,” she says hastily. She presses end, hanging up before he can ask her about curtain bangs.

(Yes, if he thinks they won’t be a bitch to grow out in the fall). 

Fin wastes exactly zero time as she puts her down. 

“You taking a personal day next Monday?” he asks. “Or just coming in — ”

“I’m taking the day,” she interrupts. She reaches for the coffee; shaking it so the creamer that’s still gathered at the top mixes in. Fin must have stopped at the place close by. 

He eyes her now, waiting for an explanation.

Olivia looks right back. 

She takes a long, pointed sip through the straw before she goes on. 

“I’m taking the whole week, actually,” she tells him. “And you’ll be in charge the whole time.” 

She lets herself enjoy the shock that registers for a moment. The last time she’d taken a week off - planned, anyway - she’d given him almost three months notice. Fin adjusts though, blinks away his disbelief, and then he nods, and she thinks he’s probably wrestling with the relief that she hasn’t passed off those duties to Curry, and the small amount of annoyance at having to actually be in charge. 

He doesn’t buck her, though. He keeps eyeing her for a little too long, and then he tilts back his cup. He’d pried the lid off before he came in, and the ice in his coffee rattles and slides down with every sip that he takes. 

“You doing anything with your whole week off?” he asks her. 

“You know - nothing really on the books,” she lies. 

She doesn’t tell him about lunch, and she tells herself she wouldn’t, anyway. It isn’t technically his business at all. She just wants to keep it their own thing - just like the phone calls; this thing where the rest of the world isn’t watching, their hands and eyes pressed to the hypothetical fogged up panes of glass - for just a little bit longer.

Until they can’t anymore. 

For once, what she’s doing with Elliot Stabler has nothing to do with the NYPD, and the thought of that makes her stomach swoop low (and her thumbs type out a request to her hairdresser, it seems).

Olivia grins across the desk at her second in command. She may not have told him, but she’d already started the list of reminders - of phone numbers he’ll need to keep him on; of due dates for payroll and attendance, all the shit she does without thinking - and it’ll be good for him, she thinks. 

“Nothing?” he asks. There’s doubt on his face, but he’s smart enough not to press it at all. 

She shrugs then, and she takes another sip of the coffee. It’s good - hazelnut flavored, oat milk creamer and light ice - and just like she likes. 

He really does know her well. 

She looks down, into the iced coffee and away from him as she answers. 

“Maybe I’ll try somewhere new for lunch,” she says.

“Mix it up a little.” 

—

Elliot shaved his beard on Sunday night. 

On Monday morning, he goes over it one more time, carefully clearing away the small stubble that had grown overnight. 

He’d been debating about when to do it for six weeks - since May, when Joey left, and Eli told him the news - and he’d stood in his bathroom last night after he drove his son and his son’s pregnant girlfriend to the airport and he’d just done it. 

He’d thought about the last time he had this beard, and Olivia’s palm pressed to his face, urging him to come home and even though this feels different; this doesn’t feel like that moment, really, he still decides now is the time. 

He’s so fucking glad that he did. 

This way, he can actually feel her cheek pressed to his as he pulls her in close, right there on the sidewalk in front of the cafe. 

“Jesus, Liv - It’s really good to see you,” he breathes and she nods. 

Her whole body is flush against his; the soft skin of her check, the warm press of her body, the tickle of her hair against his neck and his nose. He wants to stay like this forever, he thinks, say fuck it to lunch and club sandwiches; they can just stay right here on the corner of those two streets, and let everyone walk around them as he holds her as tight as he can. 

“You too,” she whispers. 

Her arm is looped softly behind him. He swears he can hear the catch in her voice; the way it wavers just so, even over all the other voices on the street.

Her cheek stays pressed to his, and he breathes. 

Music spills out of the door when it opens, something upbeat and fast-tempo; something that doesn’t meet this moment at all. This moment is slow, and quiet despite the noise, and somehow it feels relaxed. 

It’s the exact opposite of how he’d felt two minutes ago, standing here waiting. He’d been anxious; not tense or nervous; not apprehensive like he felt last May, walking towards her in the misty night in front of the library. Then, his stomach had been churning and his throat had felt tight and yeah, it had felt different when he’d see her that night - when their eyes had met - but he hadn’t let himself picture that moment for four long months. 

He hadn’t let himself picture it, because that apprehensive whole body feeling loomed so large. 

This was different. He’d pictured this a thousand different ways over the last year; had let himself self-soothe like a teenager laying in his bed at night; picturing his crush walking into the school cafeteria at prom. He’d pictured her a thousand different ways - hair up, hair down, necklace there and necklace gone, a blazer or a leather jacket - but it had always been Olivia Benson, in her work clothes for some reason. 

It had always been him, picturing himself as part of her day. 

And when it hadn’t been; when he’d turned the corner and he’d seen her — 

Well. 

He’d been exactly six minutes early when he’d arrived. He’d had to park further away than he’d wanted and he’d had his phone in his hand, opening up their back and forth messages, eyes down on the screen ready to tell her he’d grab a table when he’d looked up. 

It’s like instinct had kicked in, and he’d looked up, and he’d seen her. 

Olivia, standing outside the little cafe, a soft, warm smile just tugging at the corner of her lips as she’d waited on him to look up and see her. Her hair had been down - lighter, fluffier, cut differently than he’d remembered - and gorgeous and that was just the first thing he’d noticed.

He’d been fucking stunned by everything else. 

“Liv — ”

He’d been too loud, had said her name too loud for how close she’d been and how she’d already actually seen him. He’d said her name like she was the one with her head in her phone, like he needed to get her attention and he’d watched her smile grow wider, bigger; her head shaking softly as she’d stood right there, waiting. 

“Sorry,” he’d mouthed. 

He’d felt his cheeks and his neck and his chest flame bright red; an involuntary response even as he moved closer. He’d never pictured himself being anything but suave, cool and collected when this happened. 

But, god, she had managed to throw him all the way off balance, and he’d been spinning; dizzy and flushed as soon as he’d seen her. 

Olivia, standing there in a white button down shirt; the front tucked into a high waisted pair of jeans that hugged every curve from her thighs to her belly. 

Her feet in a pair of sandals; her hair down and feathered in the front; a pair of sunglasses pushed back into her hairline.

With the outfit, and the golden (bare, he’d noticed right away, and there had been a smug second when he’d realized she hadn’t replaced it at all) skin of her neck and her chest on display; with all of it, he’d been taken aback. 

This wasn’t what he’d pictured at all. 

He’d steered himself around the door that swung open between them; two twenty somethings spilling out. 

“That’s - hey, sorry — ”

His mind had been racing. Olivia Benson was waiting for him, in casual clothes; with her hair down and her smile wide and it was better than anything he’d ever actually pictured. 

He’d drawn up close; shoving his phone in his pocket. 

“Liv,” he’d said again, standing in front of her, and she’d just shaken her head; her eyes still on him. Her smile had gone all the way to her eyes, actually; the ones that had danced happily; where the softest lines had formed just to the sides. He had been mesmerized by the whole picture - the one he hadn’t pictured; the one he’d never let himself picture; a casual, off time Olivia Benson waiting for him - and he’d watched as she’d tilted her head just a little. 

“I think so, yeah,” she’d quipped back. She’d laughed, and looked down at herself like she was double checking.

“I mean it’s been a year, but - oh — ”

He’d already been moving. 

He’d already been moving, though; had already been awkwardly moving forward and closer and reaching out; and for one solid beat - one second that seemed like ten or twenty or a thousand all at once - he’d thought he fucked it up again. The ask last week, and now his greeting; just a continual misread. 

His clumsy foot slammed on the gas, driving them right into a tree. 

He’d thought she’d frozen. 

She’d moved, though; had swayed forward with a breathy laugh into his arms. His arms had wrapped fully around her, and hers had come up underneath his own; Olivia’s palms flat on his back.

She’d pressed her cheek to his automatically, and he’d felt her exhale. 

“Hi,” she’d murmured. 

Now he’s holding her - he’s still holding her; still has her body pressed to his - and she’s answering it’s good to see him, too; and when he pulls back (reluctantly, a little awkwardly) her hands slide down the back of his arm, stopping above his elbow. His own fall to her waist. 

They move apart, but not all the way. 

Not yet.

He wonders what they look like to all the kids on their lunch breaks wandering in for a sandwich; wandering back out to eat at their desks. He wonders if they look like old friends or new lovers; two people who know each other in and out and back in again; but not quite that way. 

No one would probably guess they were just two people desperately stuck in between exactly that. 

“Sorry,” he offers up. Olivia is still smiling, still touching his arm with just one hand now. “Didn’t mean to ambush you like that, it’s just — ”

He laughs, and he shakes his head. 

“It’s really good to see you, but I guess we already covered that,” he says. This time he’s able to at least shoot her a grin; the right side of his lips curling up, less nervous all of the sudden by far.

Like he’d grounded himself, somehow; just from her touch. 

“We did, yeah, but,” she shrugs, and her sunglasses slip as she does it. “It’s always nice to hear it, right?” 

Olivia reaches for the glasses, dropping her hand finally, to catch them and she tucks them into the front of her shirt. It pulls the fabric of it down; tugging it a little bit lower and he knows she catches him watching; eyeing that space between her neck and the buttons of her shirt.

When his gaze meets hers again, he wonders if he can blame the pink on her cheeks on that or the weather. People keep moving around them, but he’s so focused on her, and it’s Olivia that breaks the silence. 

“We should head in,” she says. “Before the tables all fill up.” 

He’d stand here forever admiring the color on her cheeks, the fall of her hair; the way she’s been smiling maybe as long as he has, but she’s right. They should head in, and start lunch. He has a thousand questions for her; ones he hadn’t wanted to ask on the phone.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, we should.” 

New ones too, like if she took today off; or if she shows up to work on Mondays with her weekend outfits still on. 

He nods, and reaches for the door. She starts to walk through it, turning around as she does it. Cheeks still pink, and smile still wide as the little bell dings over her head. 

“Let’s see if this sandwich was worth the wait?”