SVU. Ticks off one on bear's wish list.

Additional shout-outs to cupiscent, lazlet, rageprufrock, and bantha_fodder, who have been very indulgent about this ridiculous obsession.

ETA: And while I'm at it, mandysbitch, who was the first SVU I read, and am I ever grateful.


This isn’t their lives. Being cops is their lives. Fucking is just something they do, and it’s dangerous to forget that and pretend.





Title: The Efficiency of Empty Spaces
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Damn you, Dick Wolf!
Summary: They can go home and have sex all night, but then what?



She brings him Panucci’s, which for her is an apology. She doesn’t actually say she’s sorry, but she puts the box on his desk, which is the same thing. She sits on her desk to reach the pizza, and when he leans over to grab a Coke his hand brushes her leg.

He eats half the pizza and they talk about nothing for a little while, and it helps.

Then he says, “I got an apartment.”

“Where is it?”

“Astoria.”

“Then I’m really sorry.”

He grins. “Yeah.”

“How’s it looking? A bed and a table?”

“Let’s not go overboard with that decorating talk,” he says around a mouthful of pizza, and she laughs. “Just the table.”

“Really?”

He shrugs. “Like I know how to buy furniture.”

“Do you need me to take you?”

He shrugs again, wipes his fingers on one of the flimsy paper napkins. Thinks about the two of them in an IKEA, reading instructions in the summer swelter, trying to put his life back together.

“Whatever,” he says. “I’d like to have a decent place, I guess. I’ll be in it a while.”

Alone, with no kids and no wife and no reminders that he ever had a life outside of this squad room. Yeah, hey, fuck it. Fill that empty space with a couch. That’ll take care of it.

He throws his Coke can into the trash with a bang. “Great fucking idea,” he says.

She looks him in the eye for the first time tonight. “Well, you seem to be holding up like a pro.”

What?

He’s so angry suddenly, so angry and so hurt and so fucking tired. He stands up and jerks his coat off the back of his chair.

“Jesus,” he mutters, “what the fuck is eating you?”

He doesn’t look at her, and his footsteps seem too loud.

“How long were you going to wait before you told me?” she calls when he reaches the door.

He pauses, doesn’t turn. He’s at a loss.

“It was complicated,” he says finally.

She exhales, and without looking he knows that she’s propped her arms on the desk on either side of her to catch her weight when she slumps. “I bet,” she says, so softly that she might not be talking to him.

It sounds like she’s gone, and he can’t take it.

He drops the coat in the doorway when he turns and stalks back to the desk, and she makes a little sound in her throat when he plants his hands on her splayed legs and kisses her.

Her lips are soft and she tastes like tomato sauce and soda, and he should not be doing this, but he drags his tongue across her lips because he can’t help it, and her breathing stutters.

For one interminable moment he realizes what he’s doing.

Then she kisses him back (thank God, thank God), and he’s dragging her to the edge of the desk and she has her hands under his shirt, and when she slides her tongue into his mouth he bites it gently and doesn’t let go for a long time, and she pants his name into his mouth.

When she pulls back he drags his hands up her legs, her body, catching her shirt in his fingers and pulling it over her head, and then he’s pushing her legs farther apart and she’s in slacks and a bra and a gun.

“What?” she asks when he pauses, and when Elliot bites at her mouth she parts her lips and lets him, and it’s so fucking trusting and he can taste blood in his mouth.

He hauls her against him so hard he carries her off the desk, and for a moment he’s got all of her in his arms.

He drops her back down to the desk (too hard, she hisses into his neck) and fumbles for his belt, her belt, anything, and the gun clatters on the linoleum.

All he can hear is her ragged breathing and the pounding of blood in his ears, and when he slides into her it’s his explanation. I couldn’t tell you because I was afraid I wanted this.

But all he says is, “Oh, fuck,” and when they come (together, he knew it) she chokes his name and digs her nails into his forearms until he can’t stand it and bites her shoulder to keep from shouting.

She drops her head to the desk and folds her hands over her stomach, because with her bra shoved up to her armpits and her pants twisted at her ankles it’s her navel she doesn’t want him to see.

When he hands her her shirt, she turns her back to him to put it on.

He rolls his sleeves down over the fingernail marks and goes home.


*


Fin and Munch come back from a scene, their clothes stained in splotches of red and blue. Munch has a particularly lovely blue streak in his hair.

Elliot raises an eyebrow. Fin gives Elliot a warning glare, but Munch is already talking.

“If you were Jackson Pollock,” he says thoughtfully, “where would you bank?”

“I’ll kill you,” mutters Fin.

Elliot and Olivia bite back laughs, and when she scrapes the bite on her lip she hisses and brings her fingers to her mouth. Munch and Fin look over, and she excuses herself.

Elliot pulls up to his desk and does paperwork until his hard-on is under control.

The months go on like this; they look at each other sidelong and neither one brings back pizza, and it doesn’t happen again.


*


Cragen delivers them a new recruit. Elliot takes her to a scene – two kids beaten to death with a rock – and the girl excuses herself. She doesn’t come back; when he calls for backup, Fin shows up and tells him the girl transferred to Narcotics.

“In the last two hours?”

Fin shrugs. “Not a lot of women are up for this,” he says.

Elliot bets Fin knows. Not a lot escapes Fin.


*


When they’ve worked eighteen hours on a rape they can’t solve Olivia goes outside for fresh air.

He follows her. She’s back from the street, and he can’t really see her face, but he knows she’s exhausted. Every rape case for her is two rape cases (the current case and her mother’s case), and if she can’t catch this guy then it’s like letting two rapists off the hook every time. Some days she handles it.

Doesn’t look like today is one of those.

When he leans in to kiss her she turns her head, and he settles for kissing her temple. He can feel her pulse under the skin.

They stand in the alley (they must be next to a Laundromat, Elliot smells soap) and he holds her to him with one arm, and when he slips his hand inside her waistband she closes her eyes and rests her head on his chest.

She doesn’t make any sounds, and when she shivers against him he buries his face in her hair like an apology.

Afterwards they buy coffee in a deli to bring back. Cragen and Fin are still up.


*


Olivia is thinner, too thin. Her collarbones are visible under her shirts, and she looks haggard all the time. He wishes he could ask her about her eating, but all he can do is tell her he's hungry and offer to buy. When he offers, she'll eat.

He's gained ten pounds, and she looks the same.

Elliot asks Munch for words that mean the same as "skinny."

Munch leans back in his chair. "Wiry, taut, lithe, sinewy, lanky..."

"Pompous ass," mutters Fin.

Munch holds up his pencil and finishes, "Ectomorphic."

'Sinewy' sounds right, but he gets stuck on 'taut' and thinks about how her muscles freeze under his hands right before she comes, and he forgets why he asked.

Olivia comes back with a handful of files and passes them out, and they settle in to read through them and decide which of them got the rapist.

Munch and Fin start to argue after an hour, and Olivia mutters something absently about babysitting and disappears down the hall.

Elliot doesn't mean to follow her, but then there he is, and he's closing the door behind him and she's sitting on the edge of the table (maybe she was waiting for him, but she might just have been thinking, he can't tell) and she stands when she sees him coming.

When he presses her into the wall he knows what kind of skinny this is; this is like handling a perp, it's like touching a man, and if that makes him harder he doesn't dwell on it.

He’s not himself these days, anyway.


*


People used to say, "When you marry." Then it was, "If you marry." Now no one says anything, and Olivia doesn't know if that's because they gave up or because she stopped talking to people.

Cassidy thought she would get married. She should look him up and let him know. Might make him feel better.

She doesn't know why she's feeling generous.

That night Elliot walks her to her car, and when he backs her against the door and slides his thigh between her legs he doesn’t say anything, and as she shifts to make room she wonders what he’s angry about.

He rests one forearm against the car and leans into her, and she can feel the press of his body from cock to neck. They’re close enough to kiss, but they don’t.

A few cops come out of the stationhouse and don’t seem surprised to see them standing so close. Olivia realizes that this undercurrent must always have been there waiting for them, waiting for him to press her against a car but not to kiss her, waiting for her to stand on her tiptoes and shove her hands into her pants pockets so that her knuckles brush his cock.

“Take me home,” he says, his voice so low that it’s one deep sound rather than three words.

“What,” she breathes, “no.”

“Why not?” He’s wearing jeans, and when he shifts his weight the seam of his jeans slides across her inner thigh.

She knows why not; it’s the reason he’s even asking. This isn’t their lives. Being cops is their lives. Fucking is just something they do, and it’s dangerous to forget that and pretend.

They can go home and have sex all night, and nothing will help.

“Elliot,” she says, “let me go home.”

He steps back slowly, and she waits until he’s on the curb before she opens the car door.

She tilts her rearview mirror to the ceiling so she can’t look at him, because she knows if she looks at him she’ll stop the car and let him in.


*

Olivia’s looking for a new partner.

She hasn’t told Elliot yet – she hasn’t told anyone but Cragen – but she starts sizing up Fin when he reads, watches his eyes move over the pages. Tries to guess what he’s thinking.

She doesn’t want to switch partners, but things are too different. Harder. And it’s not just the looks Elliot gives her when he thinks she can’t see, and it’s not that she’s losing sleep because she gets up in the middle of the night and finds him in the crib.

(She thinks about waking him up and never does, and when she turns to go he always calls her name and sits up – because of course he was awake and just waiting to see what she would do – so she sits beside him because she’s stupid and because it’s cold, and he rests his hand on her thigh and even though the room is cold the heat of his hand seeps right through her jeans to her skin, and she wonders what he was dreaming about that got him so warm all over.

When she asks he usually demonstrates.)

That’s not the problem. That’s just sex, and a lot of people have sex when they’re in tough times. It’s not Elliot’s fault he doesn’t know anyone else and it’s not her fault she doesn’t want anyone else.

She just doesn’t like people looking at her like she’s his wife.



*



"New Year's party," says Munch, sliding a handwritten note across the desk. “I got coffee on it.”

"Well, at least you have style." She picks it up. "I can't read this."

"It's a Russian place," Munch says. "It's spelled that way."

Elliot looks up. "I don't like Russian food."

"Then don't come." Munch spreads his hands. "What is it to me if all my generosity is wasted on the ungrateful and all I have is Fin?"

"You don't have me," says Fin. "I'm seeing my son."

"So I'm throwing a party for myself?"

"I'll go," Olivia says.

Munch points. "Thank you."

Fin raises an eyebrow. "I'll show up if you wear that dress," he tells Olivia.

Elliot chimes in. "I'll show up if Munch wears that dress."

Munch starts in on gender roles and the cultural history of the sarong, and she doesn't have to say if she's wearing the dress or not.

Not that it matters. She only owns four dresses, and the department paid for two of them.


*


Elliot doesn't want to go to a fucking New Year's Eve party. That's his own business, and no one else's, and he doesn't have to justify himself to anyone.

In the car on the way to interview a rape victim, he says, "It's not you."

She looks at him. "What?"

"The party thing. I'm just not -. I just don't feel like a party."

"Okay," she says.

Four red lights in a row. Bad luck. Beneath them the engine hums, the gear shift rattling, and Elliot wonders if SVU will ever rate a decent car, or if they'll have to escort rape victims in Chevys forever.

"What dress did Fin mean?"

She shrugs. "One of the two?"

He laughs, and she jumps a little in her seat before she smiles. He must not laugh much.


*


She wears the long silver dress, and Fin shows. When he sees her he nods once, approving, and then introduces his son.

It's hot in the restaurant, and there are a lot of people considering it's Munch, and the press of bodies makes her uncomfortable. She feels like she lost something, and she reaches for her evening bag eight times before she realizes it's Elliot.

When the next round of drinks comes, she declines.

When she sees Cassidy, she wishes she hadn't turned down the liquor.

"Hey," he says, leaning against the bar an arm's length from her.

"Hey."


*


She had seen him at the bar and smiled, eight years ago. Seven? Eight? Smiled like she always did when she saw a cop on the street. He sat next to her, which was fine. Same squad. They had a beer.

“What are you waiting for?”

Elliot was taking her to dinner. “Just killing time,” she said.

Elliot called. “Kathy and I have parent-teacher stuff,” he said, and she wished him luck.

When she hung up Cassidy was watching her.

She had put the bottle on the bar with two inches of beer left. “Fine,” she said, and he smiled and jumped off his chair to help her with his coat.

He’d had posters in his apartment, like it was a dorm, and she remembers that she laughed at them, and it was when he looked hurt that she had kissed him. Kissing him was easier than explaining why he was funny.


*


She looks at Cassidy and thinks that she has a habit of kissing people instead of explaining. She files that away, because with Cassidy in front of her it’s not the time to reminisce.

"How's things?" he starts, like you’re supposed to. He looks brighter, taller, older (of course). He looks like he’s grown into himself.

"Good," she says, "I’m good. And you?"

He nods. "Good. Still in Narcotics."

"How do you like it?"

He takes a moment to look at her, and his eyes pause on her stomach before they find her face. He had kissed her stomach when they slept together.

"It’s better," he says, and she can't tell what he means.

He doesn't ask if she's seeing anyone, and she doesn't ask him to sit down, so he gets his drinks and goes. She fights not to rest her arms on the bar and sink her head into them.

Can’t keep a boyfriend, can’t keep a partner, can’t keep work out of the bedroom, can’t keep a partner. What a mess. She's such a fucking mess. She's going home.


*


Elliot stands in the doorway with his coat on, because he needs to find Olivia and he doesn't plan on staying one way or the other.

He watches Cassidy talking to her. It’s none of his business, of course, but Cassidy thought too much of himself when he was SVU and he thinks too much of himself now and he needs to watch where he’s looking. When Cassidy walks away and Olivia doesn’t look after him, Elliot allows himself a moment of triumph.

She turns on the stool, and he can tell from here that she’s given up trying to be normal for the evening. When she looks up and sees him he smiles a little out of habit, because she’s still his partner and she’s had a crappy night.

She stands up without hesitation and works her way through the crowd, and a warm dread settles in his stomach.

"Come with me," Elliot says, almost loud enough for other people to hear him.

She frowns, and he knows she thinks he's drunk. "What?" she says, and crosses her arms against the draft from the door.

"Come with me." He has his hands fisted inside his coat pockets so he doesn't touch her, but he might as well be, because she looks away from him and being presented with her temple is just like old times.

Over the crowd Elliot sees Fin watching them. He wonders what Fin thinks.

It looks like sympathy, but it's dark and Elliot can't be sure, and Olivia smells like cinnamon and he's not thinking straight.

"This is it," she says, and she’s still talking when he takes her arm and pulls her towards him.

He yanks his coat off and drapes it over her shoulders, already steering her out the door because there’s no time, the clock is ticking, and he has one hand on the small of her back, fifteen steps to the car, like machinery. Like partners.

She doesn't say anything in the car, and he doesn't touch her.

He runs all the red lights.


*


In the apartment he can’t wait for her to unzip her dress, and he slides the thin straps roughly over her arms and bends to her breasts as he pushes up her skirt.

She leans her head back against the wall, trying to get a grip on herself and wondering who she’s kidding. She locks one hand around his neck instead, and that seems to make more sense.

She feels dizzy, and when he takes her waist and turns her to the bed she clutches at his back and he moans against her neck, drags his hands to her hips and grinds himself against her.

Then she remembers where she is.

When he pushes into her she bites her lips so she won’t make any embarrassing sounds, because God he feels so good, and she thinks it’s cruel that they’re so good at this.

He moves to trap her hands, but he pulls away before she can protest, and she bites his jaw as a thank-you.

His eyes are half-lidded and his mouth parted, and she watches him moving above her and tries to memorize everything.

He drops his head to her shoulder when he comes, and when she comes she looks away even though he can’t see her.

She feels like her body’s made of lead, and she starts to tell him, starts to explain, but then he’s sliding an arm around her and breathing evenly against her neck.

“I’m sorry,” she says, not knowing if he’s asleep. Hoping he is.


*


He takes her to her apartment so she can change before work. In the daylight her dress seems somber, and it scratches against her skin everywhere Elliot bit her.

Elliot waits in the living room while she changes, and when she comes out she sees a flicker of emotion across his face and wonders what he’s thinking.

There was a time she would have known.


*


Cragen calls Elliot into his office.

“Sit,” Cragen suggests, and it’s then Elliot knows how bad this news will be.

“So what now?” he manages..

Cragen leans on the edge of the desk and folds his arms. “If Fin and Munch don’t mind, it will be a quiet trade.”

Elliot’s breath seems very loud in his own ears.

Elliot says some things and Cragen says some things and they seem to be civil, but Elliot isn’t paying attention.

When he sits back at the desk he opens a file and stares at it as if he can will himself into being someone else.

He doesn’t look up from the file, but in his peripheral vision he knows she’s looking at him.

“That was it,” she says, and her voice sounds very flat and far away.

He closes his eyes. Nods. Doesn’t say anything.


*


Later that night Elliot tries to remember who his new partner is. He can’t.

He hopes it's Fin. Not a lot escapes Fin.