Title: 9 Crimes

Author: mindy35

Rating: M, further adult stuff

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Dick Wolf, NBC et al. Lyrics are property of Damien Rice and are used without permission. No infringement intended or money made.

Spoilers: Nope

Pairings: Elliot/Olivia, Olivia/Other, Elliot/Other.

Summary: Their crimes are numerous, too numerous to count. But nine in particular stand out. Sequel to "Cheers Darlin'", a Damien Rice inspired AU in which Olivia is married with kids and Elliot is a pining singleton (but we all know who they belong with).

A/N: If you haven't read "Cheers Darlin'", this will probably not make a great deal of sense, so maybe go read that one first. If you already have, welcome back to my angsty alternate universe, I hope the wait proves worth it. This first chapter is pretty long and includes a lot of exposition. I considered posting it in two halves but I know everyone has been waiting to hear from Olivia so here is her POV, intact and in full. Please read forth and please feed the box…

i.

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It's the wrong time
For somebody new
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse…

Her crimes are numerous. Too numerous to count. But four in particular stand out to her.

The first hides in the past, buried in an alcoholic haze, in the last time she felt that languid, infinitely emboldening sensation. As such, she cannot trust her own memory. Her recollections, the residual sensations of that night are both blurry and unbearably clear, both sharply focused and faintly shadowed, both jumbled up and perfectly preserved. Without the alcohol to spur her on, to heighten her nerve, it's unlikely she'd have had the sudden and strange inspiration, the unmitigated gall to press herself back into her partner's body. To utter brutally crushed and crude words that had seemed so true, so irrepressible for such a long time.

She'd resisted such an impulse for two years. Ever since stretching out her hand and feeling it slide along his, feeling a volt of electricity shock her palm, stirring skin that hadn't known the touch of another man in years. He was the new recruit from the Bronx, Rebecca's replacement. She hadn't wanted a new partner, had told Cragen as much. She'd asked to be partnered with Munch or Jeffries but what she really wanted was her old friend back at her side, bolstering her backbone with their familiar rapport. She certainly didn't want to waste precious time and energy training up the newbie, giving some macho military type a crash course in sensitivity that he would no doubt ignore. He had that military look, that arrogant cop stance – two attributes that normally she found distinctly unattractive. It made working with cops simple, easy, safe. But that easy safety vanished as soon as Elliot Stabler walked into her life. As soon as his palm electrified hers back to life, reminding her of what desire felt like, of what temptation looked like, of the heat and thrill of unexpected attraction.

At first, Olivia put it down to a belated version of the seven-year itch. She'd been with Graham since she was eighteen years old. When they met, she was working for minimum wage at the fish market, occasionally short changing customers so she could eat or score. He pretty much picked her up off the street and gave her everything she now had. She'd moved straight out of the group home and into his apartment. At the time, she couldn't believe her own luck. She couldn't believe his Egyptian cotton sheets, his cabinets full of food, his extensive CD collection. She couldn't believe his full gym membership and elegant business lunches and casual suggestions of weekend trips to the Berkshires. She couldn't believe his beautiful brown eyes and floppy, blond hair and lean, lanky body. She couldn't believe how he smelled and dressed and treated her. Most of all, she couldn't believe he was all hers, that at last she owned someone and someone owned her. She belonged somewhere. She'd finally found a home.

It didn't feel quite hers, not at first. That swanky apartment in Chelsea always felt like Graham's place, never her own. It wasn't until they moved to Brooklyn and she began to decorate the brownstone with her own money, in her own style that she even realized she had a style, she had preferences. And that they differed widely from her boyfriend's. But by then Graham had become more than her boyfriend. He'd encouraged her to attain her high school diploma then to apply to the Academy, he'd supported her financially and emotionally during her education and training. He'd been her cheerleader and champion as she found her feet in the world. And in return, she strove to prove herself to him, to demonstrate that she was more than a teenage screw-up with blue hair, ripped jeans, a bad attitude and an incomplete education. Part of her, a more furtive part, also longed to prove herself to the ghost of her mother. To refute that letter of abandonment that Serena left her with. To justify her own existence – an existence that had grown too painful for her mother to endure.

Those early days were good but it was no real surprise that they didn't last – they never did. She was young, Graham much older. They came from very different backgrounds and, once Olivia found her world and her place in it, she wasn't as eager to please him or rely on him. As a lawyer and a cop, they worked in similar veins but their philosophies and approaches were increasingly at odds, often causing tension and division. As each of them climbed further up the professional ladder, their paths diverged more and more, drawing them progressively apart. Graham attempted to remedy this distance and division with romantic dinners and expensive gifts and promised holidays that never eventuated. Olivia often yawned her way through the dinners after working a long, chaotic day. She could never wear his gifts of jewellery or perfume or couture to work. And she never liked taking time off, so she just nodded and said someday whenever he suggested Hawaii or Canada or Europe.

At eighteen, she'd thought she'd found the love of her life. It wasn't until much later that she discovered the truth. The love of her life was a job, a unit, an unending mission. It was an overflowing inbox, a wooden desk with one wobbly leg, a locker with her name printed on it in tape. It was a badge with four digits that gave her the power to help, the ability to lift others out of the gutter where her life had begun and a hard-won understanding her mother's life, trauma and death. SVU was her calling, her passion, the obsession that sucked up all her time and energy, leaving little for the man waiting at home in bed with his glasses on, his computer in his lap and his smile ready for whenever she happened to walk through the bedroom door. Into this came Elliot Stabler. With his fiercely trained body and military haircut, his cheap suits and underhand quips, his world weary arrogance and raw sexual magnetism. He was just like all the other cops – and he was not. He was a surprise when she'd just about given up on surprises. She hadn't wanted another partner – but that's exactly what she got.

It worked immediately. They clicked. They walked at the same pace, liked the same coffee shops, hated the same cuisine, got impatient with the same level of obstruction. Their sleep schedules lined up, their questions followed on from one another's and they took roughly the same amount of time to fill out their 5s. More importantly, their philosophies proved compatible, even when they clashed. Olivia found his name rolling off her tongue with ease within days. But she also found herself avoiding his name at home, referring to my partner only occasionally and often falteringly. The tension came from her – she was sure of it. After all, her new partner seemed quite content with his revolving door of a sex life. So Olivia quietly and methodically went about the business of denying and suppressing her unwanted desires. That lasted two years. Then she got drunk and threw herself at her partner, begged him to fuck her. She has to close her eyes in humiliation, lift a hand to her brow if she ever thinks about it now. Mostly, she avoids thinking about it.

The only upside of that awful night is that she hasn't touched a drop of alcohol since. And that it didn't ruin their partnership. She didn't know it then – two years of silent lust and suppressed longing seemed like a lifetime to her – but their partnership was in its infancy and would become the defining relationship of her life. One of them. She never again wants to mar it or experience the excruciating shame and remorse she felt the following morning and for weeks afterwards. She's eternally grateful to her partner for having the good grace to never mention her blatant come-on, their curtailed encounter, her disgraceful exit or subsequent avoidance of the topic. She hopes he just blames it on the alcohol. And that her commitment to her sobriety sufficiently communicates her contrition.

Of course, it's entirely possible that Elliot, with his many, casual affairs, did not view the encounter as seriously as she did. It's possible that while he was transgressing one simple boundary, she was transgressing many more important limits, all of which kept her life in place. It's possible that while she deeply regretted perverting his comfort and support into something it wasn't, he simply considered their partial-sex a small slip, an exhaustion fuelled mistake that was terminated in time and wouldn't ever recur. It's also very possible that it's not to him she owes the bulk of her contrition. She never told Graham of her drunken seduction of her partner. Even after he proposed to her, she never admitted that she all but demanded Elliot screw her, that she guided his hands to where she'd always wanted them. That she was thrilled beyond belief, her body hot and eager and wanting more and more and more and more when his body finally breached hers.

Olivia never breathed a word. She silenced her son, lied to her husband by purposeful, prolonged omission and defiled her relationship with her partner. Herein lies her first and perhaps biggest crime.

-x-

Her second crime is less obvious. A crime of thought not of action.

It's not that she didn't want to marry Graham or didn't love him. Standing at that altar, hands held in front of the priest, surrounded by their family and friends, their kids grinning and looking on, Olivia felt overwhelmed by love. She adored Graham in a way her eighteen year old self could never understand. He had given her three beautiful children who she'd never, ever regret. Not with a single fiber of her being. She knew how it felt to be regretted by a mother and she could never inflict such pain and shame on her own offspring, the beloved beings she'd carried in her belly. She wanted them to have everything she lacked. Stability. Love. Fun. A childhood watched over by a faithful father and mother. She was absolutely certain she was doing the right thing. By accepting Graham's proposal, by putting on that white dress, by repeating her vows – she only became surer.

…And yet…

One small, quiet part of her was simply aware that standing to her right was another man. A man who knew things about her that no one else did, not even her intended. A man who drove her crazy and calmed her down. A man who made her heart thump by handing her a coffee cup. A man who not only understood her passion but shared it every day. A man who knew the woman she'd gradually grown into. Standing at the altar, his presence made the hairs at the back of her neck tingle, it made the skin on her lower back shiver. She expected any minute to be called a fraud, to be denounced in front of the entire congregation as not deserving all she'd been given. She looked up at the looming crucifix and felt, for the first time in a long while, like she didn't belong where she stood. That she was standing in someone else's rightful place. Her cheeks heated in anticipation, in disgrace. Her sweaty hands gripped Graham's. But her denouncement never arrived.

The ceremony went off without a hitch, just as rehearsed. No one saw the invisible thread that stretched between her and her partner, binding them together for life and mocking any other commitment she might make. She didn't know how anyone could miss it – particularly when they were standing up there in front of everyone, in the light of Graham's intermittently loved Lord. But they did. The invisible remained invisible. What was secret remained concealed. And she became a married woman while thinking of another man.

As soon as she stepped away from Elliot, her guilt eased, her spine relaxed, her blood began to pump more normally. Her thoughts at the altar seemed ridiculous, the result of panic and nothing more. They seemed especially ridiculous when she observed Elliot return to the wedding reception with his mussed and flushed date, clearly post-tryst. Over the years, Olivia had trained herself not to notice such things, to ignore the pang in her gut and the guilt that followed it. She understood that her partner was a very sexual man. Elliot exuded a barely contained erotic energy that was difficult for any woman to ignore. She herself fell victim to it with that first innocuous handshake. And whilst in his orbit, it felt incredible – emboldening, thrilling, disorienting. Whilst in his orbit, she felt like the only woman in the world, the only woman in his world. But Olivia only needed to take a step back to know how untrue, how misguided that sensation was. Elliot Stabler didn't subscribe to just one woman. Elliot Stabler had many women. She was the only exception. She seemed to be and wanted to remain the one woman in his life who wasn't disposable.

So Olivia maintained her distance and maintained her perspective. From a safe distance away, she could see that Elliot was devoted to her. He respected her, valued their friendship and partnership. They cared about each other deeply. But the relationship – despite their mistaken foray into such territory – was meant to be neither sexual nor romantic. For the good of their work, that was best left separate. For Elliot, that meant Laurel and Georgia and Megan and Cynthia and Sara and Cathie and even an honest-to-God Brittany. For Olivia, that meant Graham. It meant marriage and children and a home. All precious things she didn't want to lose sight of. All precious things that – as a loveless, family-less child – she never thought she'd possess.

-x-

Her third crime occurs in the hushed limbo of a hotel hallway.

She's closing the door, heading out to meet Graham and his extended family at a Praguian café when a familiar figure comes striding towards her. She can't completely make him out, the lighting is so dim, but his silhouette is enough to distinguish him. He seems to be wearing the same black suit he wore for the wedding, as if he's followed her straight from the reception to her hotel, without changing, without stopping, without even sleeping. Marching at her, he looks incongruous – his rough-hewn body, so indigenous to the New York landscape appears larger and darker within the delicate confines of the hotel hallway. But despite this – the incongruity of his arrival, his dress and form – something instinctive in her is happy, relieved to see him. She feels instantly grounded, at home in his presence.

This changes as soon as the shadows unmask her partner's ferocious expression. Without preamble, he tells her he needs to talk to her and launches into some preconceived conversation of his own design. At first, she's playing catch-up. At first, she thinks something terrible has happened, her mind beginning to scan for possibilities. But Elliot is rambling about Dani and Dani's cousin, about Graham and some blonde. Olivia shakes her head, tells him she's expected downstairs – Graham will be waiting for her in the lobby. Her partner drops his Air Force tote to the floor, grabs her elbow.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you?" he puffs, face creased with outrage. "Graham – he cheated on you. With her—"

Olivia frowns at him. Now she's caught up. "I know."

"He's been cheating on you for years, Liv—"

"I know."

Her aim is to shock him, stall him, make him let go. It works. Her lie – a tiny but necessary crime – causes her partner to blink at her like he doesn't know who she is. She hates it. She can't look at him if he's looking at her like that. So she doesn't.

He releases her elbow, takes a step backwards, eyes narrowing at her in indignant disbelief. "You know? How can you know? How could you—"

"How big an idiot do you think I am?"

She steels her gaze at the carpet then lifts it to his. She's more than a little offended that he could think her that clueless. She's a detective for Chrissakes, just like him. Does he honestly think she'd have that big a blind spot? Does he honestly think she needs him to fly across the globe and tell her something she figured out years before? Something that is none of his goddamn business? Okay, so she hadn't known about that particular blonde, that was an out-and-out lie. Graham hadn't told her about that indiscretion despite his many, seemingly sincere promises to be absolutely upfront.

Honesty's the prevailing policy in their relationship, one recommended by their highly regarded and highly paid therapist. They'd begun couples counseling years before. It was her suggestion and a practice Olivia believed in. In theory. She liked their shrink, responded to her ideas regarding trust and intimacy and long-term goal-setting. But she often found herself avoiding or postponing their sessions. Her schedule – and underlying resistance – kept them from attending regularly. Which probably explained their lack of progress, the continuing distance, his sporadic infidelity. When he proposed, Graham had said that marriage would change him, contain him. It would fix everything. And she'd hoped rather than believed he was right. She'd hoped marriage would offer them a clean slate, a fresh start. An impossible wish now that Elliot Stabler had taken it upon himself to act as her guardian, ousting and condemning the state of her relationship like he was some sort of expert.

He wasn't. And she hadn't confided in him on purpose. For years, she'd told herself it was to preserve the sanctity and privacy of her and Graham's relationship. But standing there under his stare, she knows it was more to preserve her own pride. She didn't want him to know. She didn't want him to even suspect. It was the last thing her devastated soul needed. Because she'd considered leaving, of course she had. And she had left, more than once. After Graham screwed a friend of hers, she kicked him out of the house on the spot. But she always relented, always reconsidered. Their shrink called it forgiveness. Graham called it love. In her heart of hearts, Olivia wondered if she was just too damn scared. Maybe she lacked the guts to go it alone after so many years. Maybe she wasn't the best possible mother, the mother her kids needed – the brave and autonomous matriarch that Elliot was raised by. Nor was she anything close to the woman her partner saw when he looked at her.

She'd tried – she'd put absolutely everything into her relationship with Graham. Emotionally, intellectually and sexually. But it wasn't enough. She couldn't keep her husband's eyes from wandering, his hands from wanting or his dick in her enthrall. In their sessions with their shrink, Graham would assure her that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. That he still found her desirable, sexy, tempting. Olivia listened and nodded but couldn't help but feel that she had failed at something distinctly and vitally womanly. Over time, Graham's deficiencies had made her feel like less of a woman and more of a failure. And of every man she knew, of every man in the entire world, Elliot Stabler was the one man she didn't want to view her that way. With him, she felt capable, strong, in control. With Elliot, she felt valued. Admired, even. And – just occasionally, just furtively – like a beautiful woman, a sexual being. Not a failure. Not someone to turn away from.

Only now he knew. Now he's looking at her like there's something wrong with her, something missing, something unconscionable. It's the exact expression she'd been hoping to avoid. So before Elliot can turn away from her, Olivia walks away from him. She straightens her spine and tells him to go home. She tells him she and Graham are working things out and he shouldn't have come. She tells him she'll see him in a month. Then she bows her head and strides toward the elevator. It's only as she's walking away, her back to him and tears pricking her eyes, that the thought returns to her.

I love him

The thought isn't specific – it doesn't designate who him is. And arising, so surprising, out of nowhere, out of chaos and distress, she isn't sure how much credence to give it. It feels true. Profoundly, terrifyingly, shockingly true. Just as it did the first time. When she stood in that doorway after her wedding, on the threshold of what she'd hoped would be a new life. She'd faced her partner as a married woman and the thought simply…presented itself, unbidden and unhindered and horrendously inconvenient.

I love him

That was all. Just…

I love him

Simple. Yet so very, very complicated. She'd lingered, looking at him. Then kissed his cheek and left. She'd had to stop midway down the stairs to take a breath and push down the overwhelming torrent of love and regret and panic and confusion and dismay. She'd wanted to deny the notion outright. She'd wanted to believe with everything she had that she'd not just made the biggest mistake of her life by moving towards one man while leaving behind the one who possessed her heart. Tears slipped from her eyes as she descended the stairs. Luckily, Olivia was able to pass these off as the expected emotions of a bride. She gave Sophie, Frankie and Charlie each a kiss, grasped her husband's hand and let the car take her away, those three perilous words still ringing in her head.

I love him…I love him…I love him…

They perform the same ritualistic chant as she boards the elevator in Prague, presses the button and watches the doors slide closed on her stunned and stationary partner. He stands in the middle of the hallway in his wrinkled suit, hands hanging loosely, uselessly at his sides. Olivia punches the button a few more times, removes her gaze from his. The harder she tries to deny them, push them to the back of her mind, the louder those three words get and more real they feel. The only way to escape them seems to be to escape him – but not even this works.

Elliot's in her head now, he's in her blood. He found her in Prague and now she finds him all over Prague. Wherever she turns, he's there. She sees him when she's touring the art galleries and botanical gardens. She thinks of him when she's holding her husband's hand, when he kisses her lips, when they go to bed each night, their backs meeting in the middle of the bed. She thinks of him most when she wakes in the morning, alone in the unfamiliar bed. While Graham rises early to go running, Olivia lies still and splayed on the mattress, her thoughts running relentless rings round each other – and one forever prevailing.

…I love him…I love him…

I love him.

-x-

Her fourth crime is perpetrated four days after her partner gate-crashes her honeymoon.

Rising from the empty bed, Olivia massages her stiff neck and releases a long sigh. Her limbs feel lax, weak, strangely exhausted by all the unfamiliar rest. She slops into the ensuite, twists the taps on the shower and pulls her nightshirt up over her head. Her confusion has mellowed in the last few days, her comfortable relationship with her husband reasserting itself and her strained relationship with her partner receding into the background. She assumes he is now back in New York, slouching at his desk, punching up perps and irritating Dani in her absence. She's enjoyed Prague, its beauty and culture. And she's enjoyed meeting Graham's family, from the scarf-addicted Nanas to the ruddy-cheeked babies. She feels accepted by them, enveloped by familial affection. Not that it's stopped that maddening chant from occasionally intervening, often at the most inconvenient of times.

The words are quieter now. Less insistent. Oddly, it only makes their potential more shattering.

They take a rare break from their routine proclamation as she steps under the warm spray, letting it flood her face and hair and roll down the curves and angles of her body. She turns one way then the other, her eyes closed to the soft, soothing hiss. Moments later, Graham interrupts her bliss, pushing through the bathroom door as he peels off his spandex shirt. He takes out his cock, pees in the toilet then climbs in the shower and adjusts the temperature, all the while rhapsodizing about the new running path he just discovered. Olivia steps out of the shower, dabs herself dry with one of the hotel's plush towels then wraps it round her body. She's brushing her hair in the mirror, combing back the wet, dark strands when Graham finishes his shower, steps out and presses his damp, naked body against her back, his erection nudging her butt.

Olivia closes her eyes and follows his lead. She lets him rid her of the towel, lets him explore her body, lets him push Elliot Stabler and those three relentless words out of her head. God, she wants him to – and it almost, almost works. As long as she keeps her eyes closed, it works. But when she opens them, gazing into the mirror and expecting to see Graham's blond hair, Graham's brown eyes, Graham's long face and angular shoulders, she is shocked. She sucks in a breath, her body instantly liquefying at the sight of her partner – his cropped brown hair and intense blue eyes, boring into her, pinning her in place. She sees the well-known planes and muscles of his face – his mouth, his stubble, his brows, his forehead, his everything. It's his body behind her, moving with her. It's Elliot inside her and her body just reacts. Her arousal spikes, her heart leaps, her eyes slam shut and she comes hard. Her orgasm is so good it's got to be a crime. She just hopes she doesn't say his name. Or that Graham is too lost in his usual sex haze to notice.

He pumps inside her for a few more minutes, panting rhythmically in her ear. Olivia pulls in a breath as she recovers. She plants her hands on the sink, slowly lifts her head and meets her own eyes in the mirror. Elliot is no longer there with her. He has vanished, just like her pleasure. He's been replaced by Graham, her husband, the man she married despite that little part of her that longed for someone else, someone new, someone taboo. Someone so close that nobody could see – not even her – that she loved him. Loves him. Always has.

The following morning, she asks Graham if they can cut their honeymoon short. A month is too long, she says, she misses the kids. Graham agrees, smiling at her and kissing her and promising that they will make the most of the time they have left. Olivia lies awake that night with one person on her mind, too many thoughts crowding her head and four terrible crimes to regret.

TBC...