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Elliot, better than anyone, understands the struggle to get anywhere on time when you do the kind of work he does but with every minute that passes without a text from Olivia, the more that understanding wanes and his frustration grows. She’s several hours late and he hasn’t heard a peep. No one else seems particularly concerned but they’re mostly through dinner now. In the beginning, he hadn’t thought much about it, he’d told her dinner wouldn’t be right away and had expected her to be running behind but this was something else. He’d texted her about an hour before the food was going to be put out just in case she’d forgotten or lost track of time but there’d been no response.
Things between them have been good, more than good. They’re not quite back to normal but they’re getting there and this is the first time she’d accepted an invitation from him that wasn’t a quick lunch or coffee. It’s also the first time she’s been in a room with his family that wasn’t because of tragedy and interventions. It was never going to be perfect. Noah couldn’t come — some dance thing keeping him away — but it was a start and Elliot had been excited. He’d prepared for her to show up close to dinner time and possibly make an excuse to leave before dessert but still, she was going to come and it made Elliot feel like everything really was going to be okay.
Only, she hasn’t shown and it’s been radio silence since this morning when she’d texted to ask if she should bring anything.
The twins have finished their food and are playing. Dickie has inhaled his food — like always — and is picking off Lizzie’s plate instead of grabbing seconds. Even Eli and Carl are close to finishing and Kathleen isn’t far off either. Elliot looks down at his own plate, pushing the food around. They’ll all be done soon enough and he’s pretty confident Olivia won’t show up before that but then-
There’s a knock at the door, short but firm, and Elliot stands to get it. He can feel the tension in his body as he moves. The anger is still there. He knows he screwed up before but he thought they were beyond this. That she would at least text and he knows it’s nothing work-related that kept her way because Fin would have given a heads up. Fin, who has been teasing him about this dinner since he first asked Olivia a week ago, and who Elliot admittedly has already texted to see if she was still in the office.
She wasn’t.
There’s a split second of fear that maybe something bad happened between her leaving the office and now but if Fin is correct, she had left almost a half hour before Elliot had texted her.
When he flings open the door, she’s standing there and she looks okay. There doesn’t seem to be anything visibly wrong at least and he’ll admit that does soothe his heart. She’s still in her work clothes so she hasn’t been home although there is a bottle of wine in her hands. All she does is look at him and then past him into the apartment and Elliot’s not sure why that, in particular, makes him snap but it does.
“Everyone’s almost done eating.”
It comes out harsher than even he expects, his frustration seeping through. Her eyes snap back to his and she blinks. “Oh.” A flash of something appears on her face but it’s gone before he can decipher it. “I’m sorry.”
He wants to tell her that there’s still plenty left and any one of them would be happy to plate it up and make sure it’s warm enough for her but that frustration is still there, so instead, what comes out is, “you could’ve texted, Liv. It wouldn’t have taken long to tell me you’re running late or that you weren’t coming.”
“I-”
“And I get it, this probably wasn’t a big deal to you but when you said yes to this I thought that maybe you’d forgiven me.”
“I have.”
But the words are so quiet, he’s not sure he can believe them.
“What was it? A taste of my own medicine?” He can’t help but ask and the bitterness is still evident in his tone. He knows he’s the one on thin ice but he’s also been left to sit in his own anger for too long this evening and while he’ll probably regret it and apologise soon enough, he’s too worked up right now. “I ignored you back then so you do it now? I’m sorry for that and also because it took me too long to get better at it when I came back but-”
“Hey, you guys okay?” Both Elliot and Olivia jump at the sound of Kathleen’s voice as she joins them by the front door. It’s Olivia that responds, nodding softly and it doesn’t seem like they were overheard. “Good. Were those flowers okay?”
Flowers? Elliot’s brow furrows as he looks between them.
The smile on Olivia’s face is small but genuine. “They were wonderful, thank you. I never would have had the time to get them myself. I’m just sorry I wasn’t there when you dropped them off.”
“It was nice catching up with Fin,” Kathleen says with a small shrug. “I also gave grandma a heads up that you might be late or might not make it at all so she made sure to keep your food aside so it should still be good enough to eat once she works a little bit of extra magic.”
That only makes Elliot’s brow furrow more. She knew Olivia would be late, that she might not make it at all. When had this happened?
“That makes me feel even worse then,” Olivia says tentatively and she’s frowning. “I’m not going to be able to stay.”
His stomach plummets but Kathleen only smiles. “Don’t worry about it! And you really didn’t have to drive all the way here.”
“No, it wasn’t far and I thought I could bring this.” She holds up the bottle of wine and hands it over. “As an apology and to let you know, in person, that I do want to reschedule.”
“Any time!” Kathleen assures and Elliot wants to agree but all he can focus on is the fact that Olivia is decidedly not looking at him. “Grandma is trying this new recipe for dessert so would it be too weird if I dropped some off for you and Noah tomorrow? I know she’ll want your opinion.”
“If there’s enough we’d both love that.”
At that, Kathleen hands the bottle of wine off to Elliot and moves forward to hug Olivia. He watches as the latter’s face almost crumbles before she manages to get it under control and hugs Kathleen back. They hold tightly and his stomach twists uncomfortably.
“I hope today wasn’t too hard.”
His stomach twists impossibly more as Olivia momentarily squeezes Kathleen tighter before drawing back.
“It was… Something but again, thank you.”
“Any time.” She hugs her quickly one last time before stepping back. “Seriously. And don’t worry about everyone else, I’ll break it to them. I know how hard days like this can be. We all do.”
It hits him that this is his last chance to save this evening and convince her to stay but for the first time since he opened the door, Elliot is finally noticing how deflated Olivia looks. She might be smiling and looking at Kathleen with warmth but he can see the pain behind her eyes. He shouldn’t have let his frustration grow, he thinks. He had been so scared this was them taking steps backwards and now they definitely were.
He barely registers as the two women say goodbye because Olivia still won’t look at him and then the door is closing and his chance to fix this evening is gone.
“Flowers?” he finds himself asking.
“Yeah, she was afraid she wouldn’t have time to pick up any nice ones before she went to the cemetery,” Kathleen explains and Elliot’s pretty sure he might throw up. “She wanted to try and get here on time, I told her not to worry about it.”
“Uh, the cemetery?”
Kathleen nods, turning to him and she frowns when her eyes land on him. “Yeah… Today is- Oh. She didn’t mention anything to you?” He shakes his head. “Today is Ed’s birthday.”
His mouth is dry. “She told you about Ed?”
“Only today. I ran into her when she was getting lunch for her and some of her squad and I could tell something wasn’t right so when she told me, I offered to get the flowers for her.” She gives him a sympathetic smile.
“She barely talks about him.”
“Probably because you already know him.”
Elliot grasps her arm as she goes to head back to the others and she blinks at him in surprise. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, she said he was on the force and crossed paths with SVU a lot and I know you were gone a while but I just assumed.” She eyes him warily. “Maybe I’m wrong? She said his name was… Ed…”
“Tucker.”
It hits him all at once and he loosens his grip when Kathleen nods. “Yeah, that’s it. So you did know him?”
“Yeah, I knew him. I just didn’t know it was the same guy.”
There’s a glimpse of that anger and jealousy and confusion that Elliot would expect to feel upon hearing that Olivia dated Tucker, that Olivia almost settled down with Tucker, but it quickly evaporates and all he feels is upset and a nauseous sensation. Even when he was unfairly frustrated at her, Olivia didn’t snap back at him like she normally would. He had missed how obviously not okay she was.
And in all this time he’s been back, he had to find out from his kid that Olivia’s most serious relationship was with Tucker.
They weren’t even at a point where Olivia could trust him with that knowledge. The knowledge of a man she is no longer with, a man who is dead. A man who has come up a couple of times since she first talked about him at the hospital. Elliot’s not angry at her for not opening up to him. He’s angry at himself for how he reacted towards her because she had shown up, even if she was late.
His heart breaks all over again when he realises just how much he let her down. When he realises there were a million better ways he could have handled this.