Chapter Text
The bullpen is blissfully, temporarily peaceful. Elliot scrubs a hand down his face and squeezes his eyes shut until the bursts of light behind his eyelids fade to solid black. When he opens them again he turns his attention back to the stack of half-filled forms, carbon-copy reports, and outstanding lab orders scattered across his desk.
Without looking, he reaches for the coroner's report that Melinda had reviewed and scribbled notes all over, flagging what SVU should compare to the original lab results.
“Shoulda been a fireman…” Fin’s sarcasm-laced muttering breaks the short-lived silence.
“What?" Elliot glances up from the report to look at Fin across their desks.
“A fireman.” Fin drops his pen in annoyance and leans back in his chair. “Come on, you know what I’m talking ‘bout – walking in all the parades; holdin’ babies; everyone loves ‘em. Bet they don’t have to do this much paperwork every time they take a burning building and leave it lookin’ like Noah and the damn ark dropped by.”
Elliot cracks a half-grin, huffs a laugh, and turns back to deciphering Melinda’s handwriting.
“I’m out, man.” Fin slides whatever backlogged report he’d been working on back into its file and tucks it into the bottom drawer of his desk, flipping the lock after shoving it closed. “The rest of that is tomorrow’s problem.” He rises from his chair. “When’s the last time your kids saw your ugly mug?”
Elliot rolls his eyes but cracks a full grin at Fin’s comment. “Tucked them in the last three nights in a row.” If Elliot omits that he came back to the precinct once Kathy was asleep and he was sure none of the kids were waking up, he decides that Fin doesn’t need to know that. “I’ll head home in a bit. Cap wants this on his desk when he gets in tomorrow.”
It’s only a partial fib – Cragen did ask Elliot to get it done ASAP, ideally by the next day, but he’d also said that the hard deadline was end-of-day and not first-thing.
“What’s going on, man?” Fin’s question is unexpected but not out of character.
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“I told you – I just know stuff.”
“Get outta here, Tutuola.”
“A’ight. Keep your secrets.” Fin turns to leave, throwing “good luck with that report,” over his shoulder.
Elliot rolls his neck and learns back in his chair once Fin has stepped onto the elevator and the doors have closed behind him.
He looks up at the ceiling on an exhale, examining the yellowed tile that’s still popped out of place from when IT came in two weeks ago to replace an internet line with something higher speed.
He’s been trying, at home. Trying to be around for the kids more; around for Kathy more but Eli is almost four and it still feels forced, as though kicking him out of their home again is constantly right on the tip of her tongue.
He doesn’t blame her. He knows what this job does to families; the costs of seeing what they see every damn day. He can’t just leave though. Feels a pull towards the work that he isn’t ready to sever yet. Work that still needs to be done.
So he’s been doing his best to do the job and be home for dinner and bath time and bedtime more often. Trying.
‘More like pretending we were ever madly in love to begin with,’ the niggling voice in the back of his mind whispers. The voice that reminds him that he and Kathy got married out of Catholic guilt and obligation when they were both barely old enough to drive, not yet old enough to vote.
He loves his wife. Can’t see ever not loving her. She’s a beautiful mother; adores their children; does her best to support him. Sometimes he wonders, though, how he loves her - the way he loves her.
And every time that thought crosses his mind the same little voice in the back of his head whispers that love and in-love are not synonymous and that he’s started to think that he’s not really sure he was ever really in love with her.
He wonders, too, if she was ever really in love with him and what she really wants from her life. What they have can’t have been her plan any more than it was his.
‘Who would you have been?’ He’d asked her once, lying side by side in their bed, close-but-not-touching under low-thread-count cotton covers, staring at the popcorn ceiling in the dark. ‘If we hadn’t had Mo when we did?’ They’d only been married a couple of years then, were barely even grown-ups and still playing-at being devastatingly into each other.
‘What are you asking?’ Kathy didn’t snap, but her tone was cool. Elliot realized his mistake quickly; he hadn’t meant to ruin the relatively peaceful mood in the room. Hadn’t meant anything by it at all beyond a passing thought.
He’d never asked again, though now he thinks it ironic that was the moment he felt them shift from keeping their gazes locked on each other while the world moved to looking over each other's shoulders at all the could-have-beens, instead.
Elliot pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger when he’s been staring at the computer screen so long that his eyes can’t seem to make it not blurry. He sighs and stands and stretches on an exhale before turning towards the stairs to the crib.
He’s found himself doing this more and more often of late - working well into the night and not feeling the desire to head home, to bed.
Or heading home early for homework and dinner and bedtimes and then slipping back out and knocking out a few extra hours back at the precinct, before collapsing onto one of the bunks upstairs, letting Kathy assume he was called back in and didn’t want to wake her and disturb her rest.
Whether or not she actually believes that is another matter entirely; they’ve fallen into a routine of don’t-ask-don’t-tell over the last few years.
Trudging up the stairs and to his locker, intent on grabbing a fast shower before anything else, Elliot’s recent cases play through his mind – some closed, others left open, one an old cold-case that was re-opened and then declared a lost cause all over again.
That one felt like a cleaver to the stomach, twisting around until his guts were about to spill all over the floor of the club where a woman who went missing from her apartment three weeks earlier, worked. The MO was identical to a disappearance from a different club that serves the same crowd, three years ago.
Olivia, the woman from three weeks earlier, reappeared out of thin air just over four days after she went missing, refusing to talk about what happened, and with no evidence to offer other than an inconclusive rape kit and a constellations of cigarette burns, abrasions that were sure to leave scars, and bruises to hiding beneath the lacey cups of her bra.
They never did find the girl from the original case or the perp. They had a solid lead, but he slipped out on an evidentiary chain-of-custody technicality. Elliot’s blood boils any time he thinks about it.
He had met Olivia sitting on the cold concrete, huddled under an emergency blanket, waiting for the bus Fin had called-for after she’d been found dumped in an alley two over from the club. Had taken her victim statement and spoken with her twice more at the club after she checked herself out of the hospital, probably far too soon, and went back to work almost immediately.
“He doesn’t get to take my job from me, too. He got everything else.”
“He only gets as much as you choose to give him. Olivia.”
She had regarded him with dark discerning eyes, standing facing him, leaning against the bar beside her, in the middle of the club during the daytime. With all the lights turned on and without the usual melange of bodies and shadows filling the room the space feeling simultaneously somehow both grimy and sterile.
She was beautiful standing before him, though not the kind of beautiful that he was used to finding in clubs like these – her olive skin and sharp, square jawline and curves that would give under a man’s grip.
Not that he could see much in that moment – she’d wrapped a robe around herself before coming to speak to him, one that looked soft and plush and warm. He’d seen her at the scene when she’d been found, though. Even seeing her in such a detached and clinical way, feeling for her as a victim for him to protect. It was hard to ignore the aura around her.
Elliot had held her gaze and waited her out. Eventually, Olivia blinked, nodded, and reached over the bar to snag the bottle of bourbon that the bartender had opened but not put up on the shelves behind the bar. She grabbed a glass and poured herself a finger, downing it before speaking again.
“Ninety eight and a half.”
“What’s that?”
“The number of hours he got from me no matter what I choose.”
“Yeah, I guess he did.”
The club itself had intrigued him – lacking the cheap feel that most adult entertainment venues always seemed to have.
Elliot finds himself driving to a different part of Manhattan, the sun already having begun to set.
He’s lied to Kathy and told her that he’s working late.
But instead, he keeps driving towards a quieter part of the city.
He pulls up outside of an almost unmarked building, red lights illuminating the outside. He sees a few people nearby, getting out of their cars and making their way over to the entrance.
Elliot gets out, closes the door, and makes his way to the entrance, showing his ID to the bouncer.
When he steps inside, he’s greeted by music playing in the background, the sight of couples making out on couches, and people sitting around the bar, sipping at cocktails.
At first, he’s a little overwhelmed.
He got married at 17, and his wife is the only woman he’s ever been intimate with.
He takes a seat at the bar, ordering a drink to help him relax.
Seeing people be so open about themselves, comfortably making out in public view, sensually touching one another, is all new to him.
But he finds it to be very arousing, and he feels his dick begin to harden at the sight.
He also finds it to be a bit confusing, because he’s never felt this way before.
Kathy isn’t one who’s really into public displays of affection - he’s lucky if he can even hold her hand or give her a peck on the lips.
He watches as a couple invites another woman to join, the three of them engaging in a heated makeout session.
His phone buzzes once, signaling that he’s gotten a text message. Pulling out his phone, he sees that the text is from Kathy.
- When will you be coming home? Elliot, I miss you…
Right now, home is the last place he wants to be.
Instead of sending a reply, he turns his phone off and puts it in his pocket.
One of the women from the threesome turns around and looks at Elliot, licking her lips.
“Wanna come over and join us?” she asks. Her partner wraps her arms around her and begins kissing her neck. “We could use a fourth.”
The woman’s husband also sits up, smirking at Elliot, eyeing him up and down.
“Um…I’m good for now,” he says. He’s flattered that complete strangers find him attractive, but this isn’t what he’s come to the club for.
“Such a shame,” the second woman replies. “But we understand. However, if you do end up changing your mind, come and find us.”
They get up and leave, to which Elliot makes his way over to the bar and orders a drink, wanting to relax a bit.
He sips at his drink, watching as a woman sits down on another couch with her…husband? boyfriend? As they kiss, another man approaches them and asks to join. The men start to make out, with the woman just watching them, turned on by what she sees.
He once again tells himself that he should go home before he crosses any lines, but he can’t bring himself to do it.