The Currency of Heroes (Law and Order: SVU) by surreallis, 4/5

[caviarandmeths]

Title: The Currency of Heroes - 4/5
Author: surreallis
Fandom: Law and Order: SVU
Pairing/character: Elliot Stabler/Olivia Benson
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 47,000
Kink: Major = Restraints, angst, hand fixation, codependent cop partners. (Hey, it's a kink in the police procedural fandoms, trust me!) Mentions = Some power issues, topping from the bottom, wall sex, religious themes, tattoos.
Notes/Warnings: Graphic het sex, adult language, adult situations, mentions of rape and child abuse but nothing graphic.
Spoilers for SVU eps: Taken, Victims, Paranoia, Countdown, Scourge, Wrath.
Also, this contains the entirety of my short fic, Bound. I’ve always felt that fic deserved something bigger, and it was the building block I used to fuel this.
Thank you to lauridsen09 for reading and playing the beta, time and time again. You kept me sane and inspired, even when I wanted to chuck it all.
Summary: This job is her calling, it's her purpose in this world, and Elliot is the one who gave it to her. She's still having her beginning, and he's nearing his end, and his rage is dragging him down. She just wants to keep his head above water, before he drowns.
A season 2 and 3 rewrite AU in which Stabler is divorced before he and Benson become partners. Through one horrible year, they struggle with too much and fall into a sexual relationship in order to cope. In the end, it will either destroy them or give them salvation.
Artist: anr. Big smooches, bb! it's gorgeous and it re-energized me like you wouldn't believe, because I wanted this story to be worthy. ;)


Part Three

Part Four

[]

With summer, there comes an odd cadence to their work. Maybe it’s the way the days get long and their schedule continuously tilts off road. People stay out later in summer, and on weekends they are almost always woken up at 3 or 4 a.m. to work a case. Maybe it’s the heat.

Maybe it’s simply that she’s sleeping with Elliot, in secret. That more often than not she wakes up to those calls from Cragen with her partner naked beside her, either at her place or his, it doesn’t matter. Michael is long gone. When she’d told him she wanted to stop seeing him, he’d been more understanding than she thought she’d deserved, but maybe that was because they’d dragged it out so long. It had never been that serious to begin with. It hadn’t ever had the chance to gain steam that way. He just tells her to call him someday if she changes her mind, and then he’s gone, and it’s both a relief and a strange regret.

It is isolating in a way, working with Elliot all day, seeing the shit they see, and then going home at night and being together again. He has his weekends with his kids, and she tries to keep some distance during the week, but in the end they seem to always end up together. She realizes in a way that they are codependent to an extreme, and things might end badly if they don’t watch it, but it’s hard to worry too much when it’s working. She likes having him there at night. She likes having someone she can talk to without sugarcoating the bad shit. She likes doing mundane things with him, like lying around on a Saturday and watching the Mets. She really likes the sex.

And his temper gets better, for a while.

And then Roger Jordan enters their lives, or, as it always happens, his work precedes their meeting. He abducts Justine Foster, 12, right out of her parents’ house one Sunday morning before dawn. When they show up, still smelling like each other, Fin is waiting for them. He gives them a look she can’t quite classify. She has no idea if he and Munch have figured out that she and Elliot are sleeping together, but she’s pretty sure that even if they have, Fin would consider it none of his business.

“Guy came right through the front door,” Fin says as she and Elliot walk up on him. “Like he had a key.”

“Maybe he did,” she says. Always suspect those closest first.

Fin shrugs.

“Search party?” Elliot asks, glancing around.

“Just getting started,” Fin says. “Munch is headed back to get it going.”

Olivia frowns. “How do they know she was forced from the house?”

“Kid sister saw the guy. She woke the parents up, but they thought she was having a bad dream. They told her to go back to bed. When they got up this morning and realized the older kid was gone, they called police.”

Olivia sighs and exchanges glances with Elliot. So the guy had a good head start.

“There’s more,” Fin says, and they look expectantly at him.

“She has severe asthma. The guy took her inhaler with them, but her parents say it was half empty.”

Olivia feels her spirits sink.

Fin and Elliot go in to talk to the parents, and she walks around the side of the house and finds O’Halloran working in a bush.

He glances up when she looks over his shoulder and points to the siding of the house under the window where he’s cut away the hedge. “I found this on my walk-around,” he says. There’s a long, vertical, narrow patch on the siding where the white paint is so faded and burned away that the wood is showing through.

“The hell?” she mutters as she hunkers down next to it.

“I think she had a secret admirer,” he says, dryly. He points to the softball-sized rocks pushed up against the foundation of the house. Then he stands and steps up on them. It raises his face to window level.

“Shit,” Olivia says. It puts his crotch right in line with the top of the marks on the siding. “She had a peeper.”

“Looks like someone cleaned it off too,” O’Halloran says. “It smells like bleach. And that’ll take care of the paint.”

“The parents know?” she asks.

O’Halloran shakes his head. “I doubt we’ll get DNA,” he says. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

She nods and leaves him to it. He’s a good tech, and she trusts him.

The parents definitely do not know, and she and Elliot spend another hour calming the father down before they can get anything useful out of them. Elliot questions the kid sister and it isn’t much, but he figures out that the abductor had a tattoo of a teardrop next to his left eye, and they all look at each other in interest. Teardrop tattoos are a common prison theme. Munch runs it through the parolee records, and they come up with a short list of only three names that have sexual offenses in their histories. Out of those three, two have solid alibis.

Roger Jordan is eerily missing, and has only been paroled for four months. Huang theorizes that he won’t kill Justine, at least not right away. If he’s been watching her this long and took the time to take her inhaler, then he’s looking for a long-term situation. She was carefully chosen. It’s both chilling and hopeful.

The task force runs with it, and then there is more bad news. Roger Jordan’s brother, David, is a councilman for the city. They go to question him, and there is something off. He reacts with practiced disbelief and then overly eager cooperation. That’s something they’ve come to expect in politicians, but there is no outrage. Not toward them for daring to accuse his brother, and not toward the brother who committed the crime. It is only when the councilman catches Elliot sliding her a look that he seems to realize his mistake. He blusters a bit, and can’t seem to decide which side he’s on, or should be on, and it’s just off. She feels it, and Elliot really feels it, and when they get back to the squad room they go right to Cragen, because there’s no way this isn’t going to get messy.

He warns them to be damned sure about everything before they do anything.

“He’s tied our fucking hands,” Elliot growls at her as they walk past the swamped squad room and back into the hallway.

“What do you want to do?” she asks, resignedly. They’re just going to have to go with it.

There isn’t much they can do except wait for a lead and start doing their research. They start canvassing pharmacies.

Nothing breaks over the next week though, and as the second week starts off, Cragen has to reduce the task force. They still have rape cases coming in. They still have molested children. Justine Foster stays on their plate, but her window of opportunity is quickly closing. Then they do a little research and find out Justine was part of an outreach organization that the councilman sponsored. Sick kids who help educate the community on various chronic illnesses. They look at each other, and they know.

“We need to go back to the councilman,” Elliot says to her.

She is wary. “We don’t really have anything on him, El.”

“We’ll just talk to him. See what he says when we bring this outreach team up.”

She knows it’ll be more than that. It’ll be Elliot circling and laying a lot of traps, and it’ll be her with one eye on him and one on the councilman seeing how he reacts. It’s all they have, but the stakes are higher when it’s political. It’s just a fact of life. “You wanna tell Cragen?”

He holds her gaze for a moment and then sniffs. “Nah. We’ll just drop by around lunchtime. Nothing big.”

She lifts an eyebrow at him, but they both know she’s in.

[]

The thing with politicians is, when they’re evil to begin with they truly believe they’re never going to be caught. They really think they’re that smart. And they’re not afraid to use their power.

The second conversation does nothing to quiet their red flags. Councilman Jordan is so fake she feels that if she touched him, her fingers would sink in through layers of foam and rubber and wet plaster. Elliot’s veiled threats do nothing, and his unveiled threats only piss the guy off, but sometimes that spurs action.

He calls Cragen to complain, and Cragen hollers at them and warns them to stay the fuck away from the councilman until they have solid proof, and that is pretty much that. They sit out in front of David Jordan’s townhouse a few nights right afterwards, trying to catch… something. But nothing happens.

“There’s something going on,” Elliot says, angrily, glancing at her in the darkness. “Fuck, Liv, I know it.”

She doesn’t disagree, but they’ve got to figure something else out, because this isn’t working. When his hands tighten around the steering wheel so hard the plastic creaks, she puts her hand on his tense forearm. “Easy,” she says, feeling such déjà vu that it hurts a bit.

He breathes and he swallows and he relaxes a bit back into his seat and he says, “I can’t take this shit anymore. I’m going to crack.”

He’s just venting, but she’s not so sure he isn’t right.

[]

Another week sees the volunteers all dropping off one by one. The searches stop and the press releases stop, and the department has to focus on the more pressing cases, even if they officially promise to keep looking. Justine Foster isn’t the first kid to just disappear and be forgotten by the city, she won’t be the last.

But Olivia doesn’t forget, and Elliot doesn’t forget, and they have to work their new cases, but Justine’s ghost doesn’t fade. Roger Jordan is out of their reach, but David Jordan is still right there, and more than once she wakes in the night to find Elliot gone from her bed. When he can’t sleep he gets up and drives. Around the city looking for Roger Jordan. Past David Jordan’s house. On garbage pick-up days, he goes through David’s trash, and sometimes she joins him, because it’s really all they have, although she knows if Cragen finds out he’ll have a fit.

The job means everything to her, to both of them, but it’s the victims that matter, and kids are the worst. If the job stops them from saving one kid, then the job isn’t working.

And Elliot does crack eventually.

In the early coolness of fall they catch a lull in cases. With an afternoon off, they hit a dumpster behind David Jordan’s office, and within 15 minutes Cragen shows up.

“How long?” he demands, and Elliot ignores him, tossing bottles and cans aside to dig at bags with paper trash. Asthma medicine comes with a trail, and they just need to find it amongst the thousands of children that need the same thing.

“We’ve never given up,” Olivia tells him, when Elliot remains silent. Cragen gives her a look that says he’d expected her to know better. “This guy is the key, Captain,” she says, and she believes it, even if it’s Elliot’s zeal that is driving this.

“Well, he might be, but you’ve just run us out of chances. The Chief of D’s called and ordered me-and you-to back off.”

“And that doesn’t seem suspicious to you?” Elliot demands, finally.

Cragen is annoyed. “It doesn’t matter what it seems like to me, you two have been on this guy for a month now, and you’ve got nothing. You either back off until you get something solid, or you turn over your badges.”

“That’s bullshit!” Elliot snaps.

Olivia steps in front of him. “We’re trying to get something solid. This girl could still be alive, Captain. Huang said he thought Jordan wanted her long term.”

“I’m done arguing with you,” Cragen says, and there is no room for debate in his voice. “You’re done. Right now.”

“Garbage is public property,” Elliot tries. “We’re on our lunch hour.”

“Not when it’s on private property,” Cragen retorts. “And if you’ve ruined this case for us, Elliot, I will hand your ass over to the IAB myself!”

“So we’re just supposed to roll over?” Elliot demands, unable to let it go.

“It’s called being professional, Detective.” Cragen’s voice is hard and his eyes are flint.

Elliot swears and throws the can he’s holding against the wall. It bounces off with a hard sound, and Olivia walks toward him, glancing back at Cragen. “You’ve got to see how ridiculous this is, Captain.”

Elliot is holding a glass bottle in his other hand, and the last things she wants is for him to throw that and have it shatter into jagged shrapnel, so she takes it calmly from his hand and tosses it back into the dumpster. He turns hard eyes on her, but he doesn’t resist or react to her.

“This is bullshit,” he growls.

She agrees, but this is the way things go sometimes. And he knows that.

“You know,” Cragen starts, and she can hear by the tone of his voice that he is done with this. “I’ve had more than enough of your temper this week, Elliot. As of right now, you have the rest of the day off. I suggest you use it to learn how to be a cop again, and not a raging lunatic!”

Elliot’s jaw goes wire taut, and she can see the anger burning behind his eyes, and she reaches behind him where Cragen can’t see and she grabs a handful of his jacket, trying to warn him to stay silent.

“And you!” The captain points at her, and she holds eye contact with him warily, knowing damn well that she’s going to be put in charge of the leash once again. He motions toward Elliot dismissively. “Get him out of here!” His gaze shifts to Elliot. “Come in tomorrow morning ready to work, or turn in your badge. It’s your choice.”

Elliot is so angry, she can feel the tenseness in his body from inches away, and she can hear him breathing, hard and deep. He actually starts forward, like he’s going right for Don, and she grabs him around the waist and shoves him backwards. “Are you fucking crazy?” she demands in a hoarse whisper.

He glances at her, expression still sullen, but he swallows and she can see he’s surrendering. She pushes him back again, and he goes. They walk through the back end of the alley, away from the crime scene and back to the car. He silently hands her the keys, and she drives them back toward Manhattan.

“This is bullshit,” he says again as they drive. “You know it is, Liv.”

“I know, but it isn’t going to do anyone any good if you get yourself suspended,” she growls. “Or fired.”

“I don’t even fucking care!” he says, and he punches the dashboard, leaving a small, thin crack behind in the plastic.

She rolls her eyes. “Really?” she demands, glancing at the dashboard. “Really, with the dashboard?”

He ignores her and pretends to be interested in the storefronts going by to the side of them.

“Can you act a little more like a child having a tantrum, please?” she demands sarcastically.

“Probably,” he mutters.

He’s glaring through the windshield, and she looks at him and wants to stop the car and shake him. “The first month I was with you,” she says, angrily. “You told me there were two rules I had to learn to work in SVU. One was to never let it get personal. And the second was that sometimes we’re going to lose.”

He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t look at her. He rubs at the bridge of his nose and stares forward at the traffic ahead of them.

“And ever since then,” she continues, stopping for a red light and feeling even more irritated. “You’ve repeatedly broken both of those damn rules!”

He finally glances at her, and she glares at him, and he shifts in his seat and says, “I get so tired of it, Olivia!”

She stares at him. “You think I don’t?”

He rubs his thumb over the crack he put in the dashboard and doesn’t answer her. A horn honks behind her, telling her the light has changed, and she drives on, silently for a while. She knows how he feels. She really does. But goddamn it… She just doesn’t know how to get through to him.

“You want me to do this job by myself?” she asks, calmer and quieter. And she isn’t sure what makes her ask, except she feels like it’s the quickest way through his defenses and his anger. In a sense, it always comes back to their partnership, and what it is and isn’t.

He pauses for a long time, but she can feel his agitation. “No,” he says, finally and vehemently, and his voice is very, very low.

She sighs, but she lets it drop. Point given and, she assumes, point taken. Small steps.

“You want me to drop you off at your place?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “I’ll drive myself crazy.”

Too late, she thinks, but she doesn’t say. In a better mood he’d have laughed, but she doesn’t want to risk it now.

He glances at her, and then says, in a low rasp, “Take me to your place, Liv.”

And she can hear it there in his voice, the sex. And it makes her stomach do a slow flip and her heart speed up, but she swallows down her anticipation and says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I do,” he says. “I think it’s a fucking great idea.”

She swallows. And then his hand lands on the back of her neck, very gently, and he runs a thumb through the short hairs there at the base of her skull. “Take me home, Olivia.”

Fuck, she thinks. Sighs really. In for a penny, in for a pound.

And she turns toward her apartment.

[]

He’s on her as soon as the door closes behind them, his mouth hot and wet and very, very strong. She puts a hand on his throat to keep him from swallowing her. He’s angry, and she can feel it vibrating through him. She’s frustrated too, although her focus switched to him once he started losing it, and maybe she’s a little frustrated with him as well. When he pushes, she pushes back, and she has to use physical strength to handle him. It makes her muscles burn.

He has her against the wall and his hands are wrapped almost painfully around her wrists, and he is pressing against her like he wants to fuck her through her clothes. Right into the wall.

And he probably does.

She separates her mouth from his and grabs the hair at the back of his neck and says, breathlessly, “Calm down, Elliot.”

He exhales, hard, against her mouth and he leans into her even further and he says, “You want me to calm down? Cuff me.”

She lifts her eyebrow at that, smirking. “You really are kinky,” she says, trying to lighten the mood with a joke.

He doesn’t laugh. He kisses her again, his tongue sliding against hers and driving deep, and her head presses painfully back into the wall.

“El…” she protests, quietly, when he lets her breathe again.

He lets her wrists go then, and he takes his gun off, and she hears the heavy ‘thunk’ it makes as he sets it down, in the holster, on her end table. And then he reaches for his belt and she hears the clank of the cuffs and then he’s holding them up by one silver ring. “I mean it, Olivia. I can’t do this. If you want me to calm down, cuff me.”

It isn’t that bizarre, really, cops using their own cuffs. It’s not like she hasn’t done it before. It’s not like Elliot didn’t fucking bind her with his own fucking tie one night. Stress relief, she thinks, and that actually makes her relax a little bit.

And then he quietly says, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

And she feels a sharp pain down low at the agony in his voice. Too late, she thinks, and she wonders why she’s always thinking that around him. Why he’s always breaking her heart, one way or another. Making her angry or making her crave or making her want to hold him and tell him everything is going to be okay.

She takes the cuffs from him, and her emotions settle. Neither of them is submissive in nature. They are, in fact, pretty competitive. And having the other under their thumb, even for a short time, can be… heady. She’d seen it in his eyes when he’d had her bound in her bed. She feels it at the mere thought of binding him. And it is something very, very private.

She studies him for a moment, and he stands very still, chest moving with his breath, the rage still roiling inside of him. They never bothered to turn on a light when they came in, and the early evening through her living room windows is dim. “Take off your jacket,” she says, softly.

He meets her gaze for a moment, and she looks for something… Anything that might explain what he is looking for, but she only sees him. He eases his jacket off and tosses it onto a chair. He’s still in a blue dress shirt and tie, and she decides she likes that look. She reaches down and curls her fingers around his. He swallows audibly. She pulls his hand up and slips one of the cuffs around his wrist, locking it loose enough to stay comfortable. He shifts his stance, and he’s breathing so hard it’s all she can hear in the silence of her living room.

“Okay?” she asks. She watches his eyes.

He meets her gaze intensely, his jaw tight. “Yeah,” he says.

She thinks about cuffing his hands behind him, but then reconsiders. Instead she grabs his other wrist and cuffs his hands in front of him. And then she moves him several steps down the wall and pushes his cuffed hands above his head. He furrows his brows as she leans in against him, but she directs his elbows until the cuff chain slips over the curved metal of a hook imbedded in her wall. He looks up at it and then back at her.

“The guy who lived here before me rode a bicycle,” she explains. And then she frowns and mutters, “Well, at least I think that’s why he put the hook in…”

Elliot flexes his arms and pulls slowly at the hook, testing it. It’s made of thick, formed steel mounted on a plate and set into the stud of the wall with four big bolts. It’s not going anywhere. When he realizes this, he looks at her and stills, pressing his back against the wall. It isn’t high enough to keep him on his toes, but it keeps his arms lazily elevated, elbows bent above his head, and makes him stand straight.

She feels a sudden wave of heat. Despite the way his temper and his aggression can wear at her, she has to admit that she sees him as the epitome of masculine strength. His weaknesses only attract her more. And locking that part of him up, that strength, is… intriguing in a way that surprises her.

She stands close to him and starts working the knot on his tie. His breath is huffing out against her temple and she can hear him swallowing. He is a mess of tangled emotions that he cannot handle, and even without touching him she can feel that energy in him, the way he almost hums, like a live wire.

“You ever done this before?” she asks, because she’s curious. He’s thought about it, obviously, and he’s tied her, but she wants to know if this is something he’s done. Something he and Kathy did when they were still married. She wants to know if it’s A Thing.

“Never,” he answers, voice rasping, and when she glances at his face, his jaw is tight. And that’s something. She never would have thought of him as wanting to be in the cuffs. He’s so blatantly alpha-male that he’s almost a stereotype. But as he leans against the cuffs and his shoulders bunch under his shirt and he grits his teeth, she suddenly sees. That he’s looking for some control-any control-that he can find. She can see the appeal. When he tied her, he wanted her trust. He rarely does things half-assed. He’s either standoffish or he’s jumping in with both feet, and she is his pivot point and his partner, and she might as well be his wife some days. Maybe it would have been different if he’d still been married when they’d met, but he wasn’t. He was drifting and a little lost, and she’s not particularly found either, but together they anchor each other.

He needs her, maybe more than she needs him, and she uses that against him in a way. In the car, when she had asked him if he wanted her to do the job alone, she had known, of course, that he didn’t. She had wanted him to think about consequences, but the emotional blackmail was unconscious.

Her fingers free the tie, and she pulls it slowly from his neck, the fabric still warm from his heat, and she folds it carefully and puts it on the table next to his gun. The last time she used her cuffs for sex had been before she’d transferred into sex crimes, and it hadn’t been like this. It hadn’t been serious and so heavy with potential. It hadn’t been with someone like Elliot. Although she’s not sure how anything with Elliot could be like anything else in her life. She’s had other partners, and she’s had plenty of lovers, and she’s even slept with cops who weren’t her partners, but Elliot is all of those things and the two of them are so very similar and so very different and everything between them is so heavy.

She steps close again and starts unbuttoning his dress shirt, leaning in to press her lips to his neck. She can feel his chest heaving under her hands. “Not even with Kathy?” she asks, and she just doesn’t know if it’s insecurity that makes her ask, or just a desire to figure out what she’s doing here.

“No,” he says, and his voice is so low and so full of sex that she feels it sharply between her legs. “She wouldn’t have…” he starts, and then, “You’re the only one who…” He keeps starting and stopping and he can’t seem to put his thoughts into words, but she thinks she gets the gist of it, and it only intensifies that warmth inside of her. He wanted her trust and he wants her dedication and her loyalty, and maybe she needs to feel like she matters to him. To anyone. Like she is the only one who can hit certain spots inside of him. Oh, they are a pair, aren’t they?

She kisses his neck gently, opening her mouth to taste his skin. He’s a little salty after such a long day, and he makes a soft sound, tilting his head away from her so she has easier access. His shirt comes completely undone in her hands, and with his arms raised over his head the two sides fall away from his bare chest and stomach. She pushes her mouth up underneath his chin and kisses his throat, and then she runs her hands down over his chest and up under his arms, and he moves beneath her, his breathing faster, heavier.

His body is hard under her hands. He is tense and eager and restless, and he pulls at the cuffs and flexes, and she isn’t sure if he wants to fuck or fight. His wrists are already ringed in red, and she frowns a bit. “You’re hurting yourself,” she says, trying to admonish him.

He ignores her, suddenly coming up off the wall and dipping his head, pressing his mouth to hers. She grabs him around the waist to keep him from pushing her backwards, and he kisses her aggressively. Fast and hard. She lets him for a few moments, and then she puts her hands on his chest and pushes him back against the wall. He glares at her, looking dangerous and turned on and annoyed. “You’re driving me crazy, Olivia,” he says, but he doesn’t lift his hands and release the cuffs from the hook like she knows he could.

She does see now, what she wants to do.

She starts unbuckling his belt, taking her time. She knows he’s not wearing anything under the black dress pants today. He usually doesn’t. He doesn’t even wear an undershirt, unless he’s wearing white, and there’s something incredibly sexual about that. The way he puts those proper, conservative suits on, and then goes bare underneath them. She unbuckles his belt and then unbuttons and unzips his fly, and his stance is wide so his pants sink a bit but don’t fall, and she doesn’t even look down at him.

She brushes her knuckles, up and down, over the line of hair between his navel and his groin, and she leans in to kiss his jaw and talk softly into his ear. “I think you need to be quiet now,” she says, laying out her terms. “Don’t say a word, even when I make you come.”

“Olivia,” he groans quietly. “Fuck!”

She puts a hand over his mouth and uses it to tilt his head. “Control yourself, Detective,” she says, serious, but teasing a bit, and then she puts her mouth on his neck.

He tenses, but he stands still and he doesn’t try to talk, and she drops her hand and slides it carefully between his legs, into the open fly of his pants. He’s hard and still tucked into the fabric, and she slides her palm down over his warm length, and he sucks his breath in and tilts his head back against the wall and every muscle in his body seems to flex and stay rigid. She can sense the effort it’s taking him to restrain himself. She eases his cock out, giving him a tight squeeze, and then she takes her hand away. He exhales.

She drags her mouth downward. When she reaches his chest, she starts marking him. She sucks at his skin, and then she licks at his nipple, and then she scrapes her teeth across his clavicle. The handcuff chain clinks and slides above her, but his arms stay secure. She moves down, slowly, and he breathes noisily above her, his chest rising and falling rapidly with his excitement. She sucks small, dark bruises into the soft skin of his stomach, and then she drags her teeth over his ribs, and when she finally nudges her way under the waistband of his pants and gives him a real bite on his hip, he gives a breathless groan and she hears a metallic creak. She glances up then to see his fingers curled around the hook, his sleeves falling down his forearms and his muscles standing out in stark relief. His head is tilted back and his eyes are closed, and he has his mouth firmly shut but is breathing, hard, through his nose and everything about that image goes straight to her core and makes her want him.

He’s pressing his hips forward toward her, and she pushes him back again, and gives him a tickling kiss along the top of his thigh. She could give him head, but she’s not in the mood to fight him when he’s so wound up. It’s been a long, hard day.

Instead she grabs his cock in her hand and gives him a rough tug. He thrusts into her hand, and she does it again. Then she stands and slides one hand behind his head, pulling his mouth down to hers. He kisses her eagerly and pants into her mouth, and she twists her other hand around his cock and starts stroking him. The metal hook and her wall start creaking again as his hands tighten and pull, and he makes a low sound and drops his mouth from hers, breathing too hard to kiss her. She scrapes her nails through his hair and over his scalp, and she keeps up the pace on his cock, steady and tight and just a little too rough, and he grits his teeth and groans, and then his shoulders slam back against the wall and he’s coming.

She lightens her touch, stroking him slowly through it, and he gasps in her ear, his forehead pressed to her temple. Her hand is slippery and she can hear wet drops hitting her floor, and she is almost uncomfortably aroused.

She lets go of him as he suddenly relaxes back against the wall.

“Fuck,” he swears, quietly, still breathing hard. He squeezes his eyes shut and his head droops. “Fuck.”

She gives him a moment, wiping her hand in the tails of her shirt.

As he comes back to her and his breathing calms, he sags a bit more against the cuffs and pulls on them steadily. She can feel the energy draining out of him. He twists his wrists in the cuffs though, and she glances up, seeing red smudges against his skin.

“You’re bleeding, El,” she says, softly, rubbing her thumb over his hair-roughened jaw. “Don’t.”

“So what,” he rasps, just as softly, and he doesn’t look at her.

He breaks her heart a little more again. She rests her forehead against him briefly. She doesn’t know how to give him what he needs without hurting him. She doesn’t know how to get that pain out of him. She has enough of her own to know it’s not an easy fix.

She reaches up and pushes his arms up, leading the cuff chain over the hook and bringing his arms slowly down. He exhales slowly and rolls his head and shoulders a bit, but when he glances at her, his eyes hold a mixture of bliss and hurt. She finds his cuff key and frees him, and he puts his hands on her immediately, sliding them over her shoulders and around her neck and bringing her close to him. She stands in his arms, and he doesn’t say anything, just keeps her close, and she understands. She remembers how she’d felt after he’d untied her. It had felt so draining, and she’d been exhausted. She’d felt utterly… exposed, open to any hurt he wanted to throw her way. But he’d been soft and warm and he’d told her he needed her, and then he’d slept so close to her that she’d felt his weight and his heat all night long.

She peels his shirt from his arms, carefully avoiding his wounded wrists, and she finds that her hands are steady, even though she feels a little shaky inside. This is too much, she thinks. Way too much.

This thing between them is not going away, and it’s not getting easier, and it’s very, very heavy. Her own breath feels hard.

“Shoes,” she says. And he leans down to slide them off along with his socks. She shoves his pants down and he sheds them and then he’s naked, and she grabs him by the hand and leads him into the bathroom. She turns on the shower and strips next to the counter while he steps into the tub. When she climbs in behind him, the water is nice and hot, and he pulls her between him and the wall and lets the spray pour over her. They don’t talk. She soaps him up, and then herself, and he slides his hands over her, backs her into the wall and kisses her, and he’s already hard again, but he’s calm. He’s relaxed and a bit languid and he is okay with it as she pushes him gently back and takes his wrists and washes them.

When they’re out of the shower and dry, she inspects his wrists. His jaw tightens and his face darkens as he watches her, but he doesn’t say anything. He isn’t angry. She’s having a hard time reading him at all now. He was open during the sex, and now he’s closing off, and she understands that. The cuts aren’t as bad as they seemed at first, and she bandages them up.

“You don’t need to do that,” he complains.

“You’re not bleeding on my sheets,” she retorts.

As soon as she’s done, he’s backing her, naked, into her bedroom, and she trips in the darkness and falls onto her bed. He crawls over her, and he’s already breathing faster, and she’s surprised then at how aroused she still is, even though she hadn’t come when he did.

He kisses down her body, not as rough as she’d been, but serious about it. He sucks at her nipples and uses his weight to hold her down. He licks over her stomach and takes big mouthfuls of her skin, and then he lays his teeth on her, bites down, but not hard enough to hurt. He leaves a wet, warm trail over her body that cools in the open air. When he pulls her legs apart and sucks at the inside of her thighs, she tenses and bites her lip. Every nerve in her body feels wire-taut, and maybe she’s been edging for a while. Maybe having him in cuffs has affected her more than she realized. Maybe it was more than that.

His tongue touches her clit lightly, and then faster, and then he’s there with all the force and intensity that he puts into everything, and she can’t stop the sounds coming from her throat. Or the way her hips twists underneath him. The feeling washes through her whole body, and in seconds it’s almost too late. God. God.

She grabs his shoulder. “El.” She gives a ragged breath. “Stop. I’m gonna come.”

He does. She’s surprised, in a hazy sort of way, but when he climbs up over her body and settles his hips between her legs and she looks up at him, his expression is consuming. He slides inside of her, and he does so carefully and not in full thrusts, and he is trying to keep her on that edge, she realizes. It helps. He slides back and forth, and he doesn’t press his hips down into hers fully, and it is a slow burn that saves her, and brings him closer. He shuts his eyes and groans quietly and keeps moving and moving, slowly and steadily, and as his breath deepens, so do his thrusts. Until his body is rocking hers, and she doesn’t even need him to touch her with his fingers. She arches up against him and he hits her right, and she says his name, breathless and loud, and then she is digging her fingers into his lower back and pulling him against her and she is coming on low, powerful waves that completely shut down her mind for a while. Somewhere in the middle of that she feels him jerk against her, swearing softly, and he comes, pushing her down further into the mattress.

She is exhausted then, and boneless, and he rests on top of her for awhile, before sliding to her side. Her heart is still thumping as she lies in the cool air and stares at the shadows on her bedroom ceiling. It is still too early to go to bed, but weariness is stealing over her. She takes sleep when she can get it these days.

There is a heaviness inside of her as she listens to Elliot breathe. Some shadow creeping up on her that she doesn’t want to see. Everything he and the job stir inside of her is swirling and mixing and she can taste all of it. Trying to look directly at it makes her feel anxious.

He turns on his side and slides one arm around her waist. He kisses her neck, almost chastely, and she curls her arm up to slip her hand over his jaw. “Why did you think you’d hurt me?” she asks, softly, thinking about his earlier words. Before she took the cuffs and put them on him.

He doesn’t reply for a while, but he shifts and inhales slowly. “Because I hurt everybody,” he finally says, his words a rumble against her skin. “Eventually.”

She thinks about that for a long time before falling asleep.

[]

The next day, Elliot apologizes to Cragen, and Cragen takes it, and she sits at her desk and watches Elliot work. He is calm and quiet, but she can see the lines in his face, and she thinks he is in pain. He is wearing long sleeves, but every so often she sees his fingers dip under his cuff and touch the red marks she knows are there. Every so often she sees them, looking angry and painful, as his cuffs ride up. The memory makes her feel desperate and guilty and a little turned on.

Cragen doesn’t watch Elliot. He watches her. And when Elliot runs down to the evidence locker for another case, Cragen calls her into his office.

“How is he really?” he asks as he closes the door behind her.

She stands stiffly, because her loyalty to Elliot runs deep, and she’s not going to stab him in the back. Cragen, of course, knows all of this.

“Olivia,” he says, quietly, as he walks around his desk and faces her. “I’m not asking because I want to take his badge. If he’s struggling, I need to know.”

Her mouth is so dry she couldn’t answer if she’d wanted to. This job is her purpose. It’s her lifeline and it’s her greatest pain, and Elliot is the one who gave her this. He trained her and he walks at her side, and he is there for the triumphs and he is there for the horrible, horrible anguish, and even the fact that she is now sleeping with him is minor compared to everything else. “He’s fine,” she finally manages, her voice sounding like it’s scraping against her throat. “It’s just been a hard year, Captain. We’re all a little tired.”

Cragen studies her, not without sympathy. He’s been where she is now. He knows.

“The average shelf life of an SVU detective is three years,” he tells her. “You know that. You’re coming up on that yourself. But Elliot has been here eight years already. I need you to tell me when he’s had enough, because he never will.”

It feels like her insides are tearing a bit. “Captain,” she protests, and it sounds a bit like a whine to her.

“Olivia,” he interrupts, his voice harder now. “You care about him, I know that. You two are close, and I don’t ask questions because you work well together, and you keep each other sane. You need to care about him enough to keep him that way. I’ve seen too many cops get too tired and go home and eat their own gun. The fuck if I’m letting that happen to Elliot too.”

And that scares her. She stares at him, and it feels like there is a ball of cold lead in her stomach, and she nods, slowly. “Okay.”

He nods back. “He’s never been an easy man to work with, but he’s been a downright terror the past few months. If he doesn’t snap out of it, I’m going to have to do something about it.”

It’s a notice for her to dig deeper, and she knows he doesn’t have to do this for them. Another captain would have suspended Elliot on the spot the day before, in David Jordan’s office parking lot.

“Okay,” she says, quietly. “Okay.”

[]

It still takes her several weeks to start that digging.

They’re at the courthouse, and they’ve sat all week at a rape trial where the victim’s morality and character becomes the whole focus. And she can feel Elliot, next to her in the galley, as he tenses up and relaxes again and again, because this is old hat for them and they can smell when the tide is turning. He clears his throat more than once, like he wants to get up and start raging, and she presses her knee against his and bumps his shoulder in warning.

When the jury comes back not guilty, he simply gets up and walks out without even glancing at her.

She finds him minutes later pacing in an empty alcove near the stairs. “Hey,” she asks, needlessly. “You okay?”

He shakes his head and clenches his jaw, and he says, “I can’t believe that bastard got away with it.”

She doesn’t know what to tell him. He knows the way it works. He’s working himself up though, to a good head of steam, and if she doesn’t do something soon she’s going to spend the rest of the day trying to drag him off people and defending his back.

“C’mon,” she says, softly. “Let’s get out of here. We haven’t had lunch yet.”

He glances at her, and she risks a touch. It’s quiet in the alcove, and she can hear voices but no one is in their line of sight. She touches his arm, sliding her fingers down to brush his wrist, and he holds her gaze and takes a breath and nods.

[]

They go to a small Chinese-American place a few blocks away. It’s a nice walk that siphons off some energy, and the restaurant is nearly empty in the hours right after the lunch rush. They get a plate of egg rolls and some iced tea, and it smells so good that Elliot finally caves and orders a combo portion of chicken and broccoli.

It is quiet and comfortable, and she steals bits from his plate and asks, “You ever think about transferring out?”

He meets her gaze and studies her for a moment while he finishes his mouthful of broccoli. “Sometimes,” he says. “You don’t?”

She shrugs. “Sure.” She glances down and wipes at the condensation on her glass of iced tea. “It’s just… You’ve been in this job for eight years now. You know the average is two to three.”

He pauses for a long moment, his fork resting on his plate, and then he asks, quietly, “What is this about, Liv?”

She winces then, because she should have known he’d see through her.

When she hesitates too long, he adds, “Is this about the handcuffs a few weeks ago?”

“No,” she insists, and then she falters. “Maybe a little. But mostly no. You just seem so angry lately.”

“We keep losing,” he argues.

“And we’re always going to, sometimes,” she says. “But you can’t let anything go.”

“I’m not just going to give up on a victim,” he says, sullenly.

She leans across the table toward him, trying to look into his eyes. “And I’m not either, but we have to prioritize, and you… You’re letting it eat you up inside.”

He puts his fork down and rubs tiredly at his face. “Wait’ll you’ve been here eight years. See how you feel.”

She sighs. This isn’t supposed to be a fight. “I don’t doubt that, El,” she says, trying to pick her words carefully. “Maybe it won’t even take that long for me. It tears me up right now, and I haven’t been here nearly as long as you have. Maybe… Maybe you need to start thinking about… You’ve just seemed so miserable lately.”

He looks a little betrayed, and it slices into her heart like a knife. He lays one hand on the table, palm up, in supplication. “I’m not miserable. I don’t want to leave you. We’re partners, Liv.”

She slides her palm over his, feeling a rush at the friction. “We’re more than that,” she says. Gives. Because it’s an admission.

He holds her gaze, and he swallows heavily, and his fingers close around her wrist. “You want me to quit?”

She thinks about that. “No. I don’t.” She sighs again. “I want you to not be in pain.”

“I’m okay.”

“Will you tell me when you’re not okay?”

“Yeah.”

She takes that, because her choice is to either trust him or go behind his back to Cragen, and she just can’t do that. Maybe she’s making a mountain out of a molehill. He’s always been hot tempered and sensitive to this job. He feels too much, and he struggles with the emotion, but he’s not like that every minute. Maybe he just needs some time…

Maybe.

[]

It’s Thanksgiving when she starts to wonder if that molehill is a mountain after all.

The cases themselves have been the usual sort of horrible, but there is still a ghost haunting them, and even after Cragen’s warning Elliot can’t let her go. They still have the right to work the Justine Foster case, they simply have to stay away from David Jordan unless they have reasonable suspicions. Beyond their own sixth sense that is. They’re mostly doing okay though, until right before the holiday, when Justine’s parents come into the precinct and ask what else they’ve done on the case. All she and Elliot can really say is that they haven’t forgotten about it, and they continue to watch the pharmacies, looking for a lead on asthma medicine.

“So, you’ve basically given up, is that it?” Justine’s mother asks. She’s angry, and she has every right to be, but this is a no win situation for everyone.

“We haven’t,” Olivia says, gently. “I promise. We’re just… limited in what we can do.”

“We’re sorry,” Elliot adds, and he looks stricken, and kids have always been the worst for him.

“But you know who did this, don’t you,” the father accuses.

Elliot swallows. “We have no solid leads.” And Olivia can see that it’s killing him to deliver the party line.

“Right.” The father is disgusted with them, but he doesn’t start anything. He grabs his wife’s hand and they walk silently away, and Olivia glances at Elliot and he is staring at the floor.

“We’re doing the best we can,” she tells him, softly.

He looks at her. “Are we really?” He’s angry again.

She steps closer to him, trying to get intimate without being obvious. “We can’t help everyone,” she says, feeling her own anger spark a bit at just the thought, but her worry for him is trumping everything else. “We can only do what we can do.”

He watches her for a moment, jaw flexing, and then he says, “That’s not good enough.” And he walks away.

She sighs.

[]

She works Thanksgiving day with Munch, as usual. The two of them usually volunteer so Fin can see his family and Elliot can see his kids. Holidays seem to get tougher the older she gets. When she was younger, it wasn’t a big deal to work, to have only her mother there to share them with, and then often drunk and unpleasant. But this is her first major holiday without even her mother, and it drives home the fact that she is now truly alone in the world.

Except for Elliot and Munch and Fin. And a few scattered college friends she’s only barely kept in touch with over the years.

The job has sustained her for a long time, and she still feels the fire inside of her that drives it all. She can’t help them all, but she can help some. She can help some women, some children, some men who would get no help at all if it wasn’t for her. And it is enough, because it has to be. For now, it has to be.

At the same time, she thinks that she can now see the benefit of having someone in your life. Someone to help you deal. She hadn’t been ready for that when she’d slept with Brian Cassidy, and even if she had been she probably wouldn’t have dated him. But Elliot…

They’re not really dating, and they aren’t not dating, and nothing is the way people tell her relationships should be. But she knows he will affect her life in some way, shape or form, regardless of whether he’s there in the flesh or not over the years. If they stopped being partners tomorrow, would they have anything to base a life on?

[]

He calls her late on Thanksgiving night, and as he talks she can hear the sound of passing traffic and the rumble of the engine as he drives.

“Where are you?” she demands.

He pauses for a moment and then he says, “Outside Jordan’s townhouse.”

She takes a breath and rubs tiredly at her forehead. “El,” she says.

“It’s a holiday. Maybe he figures the cops will take a day off and he can sneak Roger in without anyone knowing the difference.”

“How long have you been there?”

“I came over early in the morning, and then left to have dinner with the kids. Came back just after dark tonight.”

“See anything?”

“No,” he answers, and she can hear the annoyance in his voice.

“Get out of there before Jordan reports a prowler and they find you sitting there. Cragen will fire you on the spot, Elliot.”

“What’s it going to take to break this guy, Olivia? Because I’m willing to do it.”

“I don’t know,” she says, quietly. “Maybe we need to consider the fact that he’s not involved.”

“I’ve done that eight thousand times over the past few months, and it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

She knows. She feels the same way. But sometimes patience is their only weapon. Their only legal weapon. And she has to believe in the legalities of the system, even if they don’t always work. It’s her job to get the most from what she has. It’s his job too, but he’s been stretching it for a long time now.

He knocks on her door half an hour later, and she lets him in with a chastising look, but he is too agitated to pay much attention. He paces and she can see his mind mulling over the case and his anger building, and she grabs him by the shoulder as he passes her and puts her hand on the back of his neck and says, “Elliot, you have to calm down.”

And he slides his hands into her hair and kisses her.

For both of them, sex is the ultimate salve for anger, and even if it doesn’t cure the rage, it saps the energy from it. For a while at least.

In minutes, she has his shirt off and has him against the wall, her tongue in his mouth, her fingers laced with his as she presses him back.

“Use the cuffs,” he growls, breathlessly, and she feels a tendril of excitement, and then apprehension. He hasn’t even mentioned cuffs or ties or anything about binding since the day she cuffed him to the hook in her living room. She’d been writing it all off as a one time thing. Well… two time thing.

“No,” she says, swallowing. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Your wrists were scabbed over for two weeks the last time.”

He ducks his head forward, trying to kiss her deeper, his mouth hungry. “I loved that, Olivia,” he says, into her mouth. “I loved feeling them there and running my fingers over the marks and feeling it all over again.”

She hesitates, reluctant, because it seems like something beyond a game, and he nuzzles in against her neck and then her ear and he murmurs, “You liked it, Olivia. I know you did. You liked it too.”

And she swallows, because there is already heat between her legs and she knows she’s wet, and he won’t have to do much to figure it out. She pushes him back against the wall and holds him there for a moment, and then she goes and grabs her cuffs and a pair of clean, cropped socks from her drawer. He frowns at her when she comes back, but he stays obediently against the wall. She takes his wrist and wraps the sock around it and then one cuff, and when she looks up at him his brows are furrowed and his gaze intense but he nods slowly.

“Okay,” he says. “Compromise.”

She does cuff his arms behind his back this time, and his shoulders bulge under the strain. He watches her raptly, with shadowed eyes, and his chest heaves a bit with his excitement, but she moves deliberately and patiently. There is something… soothing about the process of this. Of taking care of him and making sure he’s just how she wants him. Of having his anger and his chaotic rage and all the strength in his body locked down and under her control.

She unbuckles his belt slowly, and he reacts to it with hard swallows and flexing muscles, and she’s overwhelmed a bit by the sparks firing along her skin and in her blood. She doesn’t bother working him over the way she did last time. He’s so hard that she can feel his pulse beating in his shaft when she grabs him, so she just lazily goes down on him and listens to the clank of the cuffs as he pulls at them. She fills her mouth with him and gets the taste of him deep on her tongue, and he swears breathlessly and pushes into her mouth as much as he can, and she hears his joints crack as he strains against the cuffs, but they hold him beautifully.

He warns her when he’s going to come, but she ignores him and invites it, and he says, “Olivia, fuck!” as he comes, like he always does, and she’s still, still not sick of that.

[]

Later, she lies beside him, rubbing her fingers absently over his wrist. There are faint red marks, but no cuts. Nothing like last time.

“Why do you need this?” she asks, quietly.

He is quiet for a long moment, and she wonders if he’s fallen asleep, and then he says, “I don’t know. I don’t need it. I just…” He trails off and falls silent.

“I don’t like hurting you,” she admits.

“You’re not hurting me,” he states. “You’re…” He pauses. “It’s not about feeling pain, it’s about… feeling something else.”

He says ‘something else’ like he’s mystified, and she falls silent and thinks about that. There are many kinds of pain, she thinks, and the physical sort can be much easier to bear than the emotional.

“I see,” she says.

“Do you?” he asks.

“Yes.”

[]

She gets a chance to test her theory when Vice pulls several simultaneous raids around the city and comes away with an assortment of johns and sex workers, and she and Elliot are roped into helping.

She finds herself sitting at her desk with Tanya King, who has been in the game for a while and knows the deal. She says nothing incriminating and she knows how to talk to police, although they’ve talked to her before and Olivia knows she’s a professional dominatrix.

Tanya is sharp though, and she gives the standard line that what she does is not any more sexual than a strip club, and that no money passes hands. If they can’t prove it, then she knows they’ll have to let her go. Frankly, Olivia is sort of ambivalent about the whole thing anyway. She’s more worried about the danger Tanya and her girls face in their work than she is about putting them in jail. For most prostitutes on the street, it’s a career born from a chaotic childhood, maybe not so unlike her own, and often it’s a last resort. Tanya is different. She’s chosen her career with care and attends to it as carefully as any CEO. She’s educated and she makes a lot of money.

Olivia is about to let her go, because Vice really does have nothing on her, when she hesitates.

The squad room is quiet and growing dark. Everyone else is in interrogation or they’ve gone home. Olivia stares down at her form and taps her pen, and then she looks up at Tanya King. “Can I ask you something?”

Tanya lifts her brows as if to say, ‘do I have a choice?’

“Off the record, I mean,” Olivia amends.

Tanya’s brows furrow, and she studies Olivia speculatively. “You can ask,” she agrees, leaving the implication that she might not answer.

Olivia sighs and licks her lips, and tries to think about how to phrase her question. She can see Elliot from the corner of her eye at the far end of the department, combing through a filing cabinet. “People who enjoy being tied up,” she says, quietly, meeting Tanya’s gaze. “Is there something… I mean…” She hesitates, not sure where she wants to go with this. “Where does that come from?”

Tanya looks surprised then. She stares at Olivia for a long beat, and then lifts one delicate brow. “Don’t tell me, good-looking female cop like you, I bet the guys all make comments about the handcuffs.”

Olivia snorts at that, smiling faintly. “No,” she says. “Well, yes,” she corrects as she thinks about it. “But I’m not talking about them. I’m serious. I’d like to know.”

Tanya’s scrutiny becomes more focused. “You don’t strike me as the type,” she says, dryly.

Olivia’s eyes wander to Elliot’s back, across the room and over Tanya’s shoulder, and then she loses her courage. “Yeah,” she says, quickly. “You’re right. Forget it.”

Tanya smirks. “On the other hand, some of the kinkiest people I know are cops.”

Olivia sighs and rubs wearily at her forehead. “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”

At that, Tanya’s hand suddenly closes warmly over her own, and Olivia is startled. She freezes, hyper-alert. “I didn’t tell you this before,” Tanya says, quietly. “Because I just wanted to get out of here, and it didn’t matter. But last year, one of my best friends, a girl I mentored into the business, was raped. And you and your partner handled her case.”

Olivia stares at her in surprise. She remembers now… “Her name was Melanie,” she says, absently.

Tanya nods. “You treated her well, Detective. You didn’t act like she deserved what she got because she was a sex worker. You caught the fucker who did it, and you gave her some numbers to call so she could get her head right again. She never forgot that. And I didn’t either.”

Olivia swallows. “I’m glad,” she says, softly.

Tanya’s hand squeezes hers. “Tell me what you want to know. I’ll answer, and no one will ever hear about you from me.”

Olivia stares at her, strangely grateful and oddly touched. “Okay,” she says. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“Yes,” Tanya says, sitting back in her chair and crossing her legs smoothly. “That would be nice.”

[]

“Look,” Tanya says, as they sip the precinct’s bad coffee. “I’m not saying that these things are normal per se, and I hate that word, by the way. Normal. The desire for them comes from somewhere, and it’s not from out of the blue. But however you got here, you’re here now, and that’s okay. The healthy part is realizing your issues and realizing that you need something different. It’s in not lying to yourself. It’s in finding a way to be safe so you don’t hurt others and they don’t hurt you. It’s finding someone to trust.”

Olivia stares at her. “What was your major in college again?”

“Psychology.” Tanya gives her a satisfied smile.

“What if someone likes the pain, but you don’t like hurting them?”

“Well… You have to figure out why they enjoy it. Is it just a release valve? Or is it a sexual kink? If it’s just a release valve, and they’re dealing with anger or guilt, then you have to find the reason that pressure is building up, and take care of it. If it’s a sexual kink, well…” She shrugs with a small smile. “Then you’re fucked.”

“Thanks,” Olivia remarks, dryly.

“It’s also about trust,” Tanya adds. “It’s always about trust. The tied person is vulnerable. They trust the other person to take care of them. It’s an incredibly intimate exchange. You can’t discount that.”

Olivia sighs. Then nods.

“You’re not hurting them,” Tanya says quietly. “You’re giving them something they need. Emotions are a hard hill for most people.”

Tanya finishes her coffee, and Olivia releases her and finds an officer to take her home. “Call me,” she says. “If you ever need help.”

Tanya gives her a wistful smile. “Thanks, detective. Call me if you ever need advice. Or, you know, if you ever just want to learn the ropes.” She smirks.

Olivia grins then, and has to turn away.

[]

He gets a little distant after that, and she figures it’s a lot of things. They seem okay together, and he still sleeps with her more often than he stays at home, but Justine Foster is still out there, and the winter is piercing in its cold. December is long with gray skies and unhappy endings. Maybe too it’s the couples they see out at night, with the city dressed for Christmas. At the precinct holiday party, everyone brings their spouse, and they have to sit together but apart and Elliot watches as she talks to Brian Cassidy for maybe a little too long. Not because she wants to date him, but because it looks better. Like she and Elliot don’t have a secret they’re keeping from the brass.

They leave separately, and Elliot is waiting at her place when she gets there. He is melancholy, but he’s also drunk, and she’s had maybe more than usual. Instead of having sex, he falls asleep next to her, and she listens to him breathe and thinks, is this still working?

It can’t go on forever, she realizes. And maybe that’s always been her biggest fear.

[]

Part Five