Chapter Text
"The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end."
— Benjamin Disraeli
It’s not often that an NYPD Captain can step out for some fun. Marriage, along with an eight-year-old son will usually prohibit that too. Life, summed up, will do that.
Captain Olivia Benson is blessed to have her best friend, Phoebe, who insisted on dragging her out tonight of all nights.
“ Come on. The boys are out being boys, let’s go be girls.” Phoebe coaxed. Reluctantly, Olivia agreed; but there was reluctance.
Usually, Olivia treats nights off and alone as sacred. Something to be spent alone with only a glass of good red wine. Not the grocery store stuff, but the
good stuff.
There will be drinks on this rainy fall night. That, in part, could be what helped lure her out of the house.
Long after Trevor, Olivia’s husband, left with their son Noah for a fun night at the arcade, Phoebe took it upon herself to show up (dressed up) at Olivia’s apartment, ready to go wreak havoc on a Friday night. It only took forty-five minutes to talk Olivia into putting on her best little black dress and matching heels. Only forty-five minutes, though, to hear Phoebe tell it one would’ve thought it took half a century.
Convincing Olivia to do much of anything these days outside of work, Noah, and Trevor took that long, it seemed.
“Does my makeup look okay?” Olivia asks Phoebe, who is busy on her phone as they sit in the backseat of an Uber driver’s car.
“You look fine.”
“You didn’t even look.” Olivia rolls her eyes and begins fishing in her purse for her compact mirror.
Phoebe sticks her neck out in exaggeration, looking Olivia’s face over well. “ Fine. You look great. Promise.” The woman states with a soft smile. Once the red light turns green, their driver jolts the car forward enough to send Olivia up with a soft bounce. Olivia’s brown eyes widen as she clutches the side of the car door.
“Still better than being in a car with you.” Olivia murmurs. The driver doesn’t hear Olivia’s criticism.
“Sorry?” Phoebe asks, hearing her quite well.
“Nothin’.”
“ Mhm. I know what I’m doing. I got you to the hospital in time to have Noah didn’t I?” Phoebe asks as they turn a corner. Olivia clutches the car door so hard that her knuckles fade into snow.
The birth of Noah was an event. He was unexpected, to say the least, but Trevor was thrilled. Of course, Olivia was too but … unexpected is unexpected. There are things that come along with that. She had convinced herself at the time that she wouldn’t be able to have a baby. That her biological clock had rounded to the final hour and thus, there was no point in wishing and hoping for something that she simply couldn’t do anymore.
The morning she took six, yes six , pregnancy tests was overwhelming. Olivia recalls sitting on the toilet, staring at the row of white sticks, all marked positive. She would like to think of that moment as joyous. As a triumphant, and marking of sorts for a new milestone in her life.
But there were questions. One being: will it be a healthy pregnancy?
It was. It was long and anxious, but Noah was born a healthy, bright blue-eyed baby. The most gorgeous eyes she’d ever seen in her life. In the beginning, when she would rock him to sleep in his nursery and simply gaze down at them, watching as they fluttered closed and baby Noah drifted off into some nameless dreamland.
“The siren was unnecessary but yes.” Olivia smacks her lips together after applying a fresh coat of lipstick. “Where are we going anyway? Usual?” She asks, tossing the small tube back into her black purse.
“The usual?!” Phoebe barks. “Olivia, do you realize we haven’t been out in close to a year? Our usual has been closed for months.”
Olivia’s face folds into an expression of dismay. “Brady’s closed down? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you. I said we should find another place. You said we would –” Phoebe glares at her funnily. “ We did not. ”
Olivia’s shoulders droop. “ I’m sorry. I’ve been horrible.”
“Ah, please. Life is life. We’re both workaholics.” Phoebe sighs.
“I’m not a workah—”
“ Yes. Yes, you are.” Phoebe interrupts, closing her eyes and pursing her lips together. “And that’s okay. Well it’s not, but you know –”
“ Life is life .” Olivia repeats.
“That’s it. Ce la vie, baby. We just …” Phoebe pulls into a parking space. “Roll with it.”
“You sound like Fin.” Olivia belts out a soft giggle.
“That’s why he’s marrying me.” Phoebe casts a sideways smile at Olivia, where she then raises her hand from her lap and wiggles her ring finger; on it, resides a small, but pretty diamond ring.
Olivia rolls her eyes, and just as she’s about to further their conversation about Phoebe’s soon-to-be husband, she catches sight of the large neon sign hanging above the entrance of the small bar they’ve just pulled up to.
El’s, in bright red.
“When did this open up? Never heard of it.” Olivia mumbles, reaching for the door handle.
“Couple months ago. It has a five-star rating.” Phoebe shrugs. She lets herself out and in synchronicity, the two women shut the back doors.
“It’s clean.” Olivia inspects.
“Please. I remember a time when we didn’t give a shit what it looked like so long as they served the most disgusting liquor on the face of the earth—”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Olivia lies, smirking as she fixes the collar on her trench coat.
“Mhm, sure .” Phoebe chuckles. Their surroundings are lively. Large friend groups, some linked arm in arm, pile into El’s — some married couples, or just couples in general, trail closely behind them.
Phoebe reaches forward for Olivia’s arm, where she links her own playfully through Olivia’s, pulling her more closely into her space. Their Uber drives off from behind them, splattering rain puddles in the opposite direction.
“Blend. In.” Phoebe snickers, which incites a soft laugh out of Olivia.
The pair make their way into the joint linked arm in arm, behind two guys, who she assumes are a couple because their arms are around one another.
Once they’re seated at the bar, Olivia and Phoebe begin searching the tiny little folding menus for their first drink of the night.
“Interesting names.” Phoebe laughs. “Like just call it a martini and move on with your life.”
Olivia cracks a smile but doesn’t say anything. She reads the menu carefully. The drink names are unique, she’ll give whoever owns this place that.
El.
She’s been repeating that name in her head since the moment they pulled up. She’s not even really sure that Phoebe caught it. The name that is. Perhaps Phoebe had seen the soft and sudden fade of her expression. Or maybe, and likely so, Phoebe ignored any kind of physical reaction Olivia Benson has to that name.
There are two people working the bar, and the only reason Olivia knows that there are two is that she heard the bartender — a young man with dark curly masses of hair displayed all over his head, declare to an older man at the bar that he had to be patient because his partner was in the bathroom and so he had to take orders himself on such a busy night.
Phoebe snorts out a laugh over the song playing a little too loudly in the place, which is The Loneliest Time by Carly Rae Jepson. It’s clear to Olivia that she’s still mocking the menu.
“ Fizzy Dickens Breeze. ” Phoebe cackles.
“Okay, they’re not that bad.” Olivia brings her hand over her face. “Let’s just order.” She adds, brown eyes examining the menu.
“If shepherd boy over there ever gets to us.” Phoebe gestures to the kid working the other end of the bar.
By the time shepherd boy serves them, who turns out to be a young man named Xander, it’s well past the twenty-five-minute mark, which wasn’t bad at all considering. Olivia orders something within her usual range (other than wine because Phoebe forbids it). A martini. She plucks the olive from it almost immediately.
Phoebe sips on a Strawberry Daquiri.
The two women talk about a variety of things. An argument Fin and Phoebe had the other night. Not about Olivia’s marriage, because that’s off limits. They talk about the bullying that Noah has encountered at school. Olivia expresses to Phoebe that she’s afraid that maybe, possibly, the world may be too rough for Noah to adapt to. Any mother’s fear.
“I’m terrified he won’t be able to handle it. He’s so humble.” Olivia says, saddened. “He has such good in him. I’ve seen what happens when the world robs someone of their goodness.”
“He has you and Trevor. He’s lucky. He’ll find his way. And you know,” Phoebe raises her now near-empty glass, finishing off what’s left of the red liquid. “It’s not that bad of a thing to toughen up.”
“I don’t want him to toughen up. I want the world to soften for him.” Olivia runs her fingertip around the rim of her martini glass. She’s about due for another now as well.
“I wish I could tell you that would happen for him. Noah is a great kid.” Phoebe says, her demeanor becoming more gentle. “But I really do think he’ll find his way. I know what this job can do to our minds, Liv. Makes you really think that anything can be taken but … honestly, I just don’t think that’s true.” Phoebe states, raising her glass up in search of Xander, who she now can’t see at all through the mob of patrons on the other end of the bar. If she looks closely, she’ll see black curly locks protruding and glistening under the red ambient light that casts down on every face in this bar.
“ I do. ” Olivia whispers, raising her glass to her lips to finish off her martini.
It’s at that very moment, as Olivia raises her glass to finish off what’s in the belly of it, that she sees the second bartender. The one who left Xander to his own devices. It’s been forever, but she would recognize him anywhere. In the Sahara, in the middle of a mirage. In the darkness, with no light whatsoever. Even through the thick glass in her hand, speckled with droplets.
Olivia brings the glass from her lips and swallows her drink. She’s definitely ready for another now. There’s almost a fit of laughter that leaves her. She’s not sure. But she wants to laugh.
It could be because he, Elliot Stabler — El, recognizes her too.
It would be hard to displace him anywhere. Beyond deserts and dark rooms.
Because behind furrowed, confused brows lies the most gorgeous blue eyes she’s ever seen in her life.