Title: In Plain Sight

Author: mindy35

Rating: K, all looking, no touching.

Disclaimer: Not mine, NBC et al own 'em.

Spoilers: thru to "Blinded".

Pairing: Elliot/Olivia.

Summary: Post-ep for "Blinded". Now that Elliot has his eyesight back, he can't stop staring.

(A/N: I am aware this story refers to a traumatic event in Mariska's history so I hope I have broached it with sensitivity.)

Now that he has his eyesight back, he can't stop staring. Or more accurately, he'll have to make himself stop staring. Again. Like he had to in the beginning. Because she caught him once. In fact, more than once.

The last time, they'd been walking down a street, joking about…something. Suburbs? Lawns? Monks? He can't remember what exactly or why. He just remembers how much he was enjoying her company, how easy everything felt between them. How when she smiled her whole face changed and his partner suddenly looked like a regular Manhattan girl instead of a hard-edged cop on a mission.

Back then, his eyes would make a habit of tracing the distinct slant of her cheekbones, the stubborn line of her jaw, the high arch of her brow. He used to wonder where she got the little scar on her right eyebrow. Whether she sustained an injury on the job or if a previous boyfriend had made the mistake of taking on Olivia Benson. He wondered if she was conscious of it, if she deliberately parted her hair to conceal it or if she simply ignored the existence of the small indent.

Elliot never asked. He forced himself to stop wondering, stop caring. And above all, stop staring. Especially after that time she caught him. His partner had given him a surprised, quizzical look, like she was the one who'd been blatantly caught out. And his tongue instantly tied itself in knots, unable to come up with even a halfway reasonable response to her face's query. Which was okay since a moment later she dismissed his lingering look and turned away. She probably didn't even remember it now. But he did. At the time, that small moment on the curb seemed to last forever. It seemed excruciating to him – deeply, darkly exposing. He felt instantly guilty and decided on the spot that he would subsequently turn a blind eye to the very obvious fact that his partner was a beautiful woman.

This was not always easy. It was a fact that many a man they came across in their work saw fit to remind him of. Eventually, he got used to it. He even stopped seeing it. Her face became simply the face of his partner, his friend, his assumed ally and occasional adversary. Her features had no other value other than that they were hers. Their inherent beauty became irrelevant. Veiled by denial, she became all but invisible to his eyes. Until the day he lost his sight and didn't know whether it would ever return.

His first thought was that he'd never see his newborn son. Never see his tiny hands and feet, never be able to completely determine whether or not he'd inherited his eyes. His second thought was that he'd never see his kids grow up, graduate, marry, have kids of their own. Then he thought of Kathy. He mourned not watching her grow old as he'd promised and planned. He worried about not being able to tell if her eyes were shining with love, flashing with fury or just brimming with disappointment. He thought of his job, of having to leave behind all those unresolved cases and future victims, not to mention the fellow officers he'd formed such strong bonds with.

Which brought him to Olivia.

Most worrying was the covert realization that while every other face began instantly to fade into blurry obscurity the second he opened his eyes on a changed world, hers did not. Olivia's didn't desert him for a second. Her face remained clear, recognizable and detailed to a fault. Burned into his brain, memorialized in his mind's eye. He'd spent far too many years studying that face across lamp-lit desks to ever forget it. Despite his early efforts not to stare, hers was the face he'd seen most in the last decade of his life. He'd seen it etched with despair, anger, frustration, relief, resolve and a million emotions in between. He'd seen it erupt with unexpected laughter and fade with overwhelming exhaustion. He'd seen it wet with tears, stalled in shock, numbed of all feeling and glowing with a quiet affection she reserved only for him but rarely let show. Even if he never got his sight back, he knew that face in all its various incarnations would haunt him to the end of his days. He'd never miss it because it would be right there whenever he needed it, filed away in his mind's eye to be instantly recalled at will. He knew the face of his partner face like he knew his own, maybe even better.

There's just one thing Elliot doesn't know that now he needs to.

When he says her name, her face lifts. Her eyes rise from her paperwork and meet his across their cluttered, battleshipped desks. He smiles as the lamplight hits her face at a familiar angle, telling him that she is tired but determined to finish what they set out to. It's late and the squadroom is quiet, making it the perfect time to ask. The probability of an interruption is low and her habitual defenses have been diminished by a long day's work.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Only…" Olivia picks up her mug, making a face as she sips and finds her coffee stone cold. "Augh, only if it doesn't have anything to do with this bastard of a case."

"It doesn't."

"Then shoot."

Elliot scoots his chair in as close as possible, glancing down at his own paperwork before meeting her eyes again. "The, ah…the small scar on your brow. How'd you get it?"

Olivia blinks at him, head tilting at the random query.

"You get it on the job?" he asks, "Or…"

He doesn't finish. He doesn't like to speculate on his partner being wounded, particularly in her private life. On the job, he's more okay with. It's an expected risk and most of the time he is there to watch her back, keep her intact. He's profoundly aware that Olivia carries more scars than most women in the world, internal and external. Which is why normally he doesn't press for details. It's also why he watches her response closely, hoping he isn't recalling a memory she'd rather keep buried.

She closes her eyes, rubbing the inner corners with two fingers. "I got it when I was twelve," she tells him after a lilting yawn. "My mom used to pass out at her desk. I was trying to lift her into her bed but she wouldn't let go of her bottle. I slung her arm over my shoulder…" she gestures to the phantom bottle hovering by one side of her face. "She stumbled, took me down with her and the bottle smashed." She gives a weary shrug, finishing matter-of-factly, "Three lacerations. Eleven stitches. And from then on, wherever she passed out was where she slept."

"Lucky," Elliot comments after digesting this new puzzle-piece. "You could've lost an eye."

She shrugs again, swipes a hand over her healed brow. "Why d'you ask?"

He opens his mouth, once again lacking an appropriate response. His eyes cut to one side as he searches for one. He can't tell her the truth. He can't just say: I want to know everything about your face. He can't say that her face is the one imprinted on his mind's eye. He can't say that when his existence was unexpectedly plunged into darkness, he remembers being pressed to her breast, her fingertips on his face and her voice floating over him in his semi-conscious state. He can't say that, after all the faces he's loved and loathed, when confronted with the prospect of an unrelenting eternal black, hers was the only one that remained, as clear as day and twice as miraculous.

He can't say any of that.

So Elliot averts his eyes and replies, "Just….wondering."

Olivia nods then returns to her work. He rises, pacing slowly across the squadroom floor to refill both their mugs with what's left of Munch's double-strength brew. He puts hers by her free hand and she looks up with a smile, brief and silent. But when he lingers a little too long at her elbow, she says in a low voice, without glancing up:

"Quit checking my spelling."

"You spelt defense wrong."

"Eyes on your own paper, El."

"And you never get who and whom right."

She presses a few fingers to his stomach and eases him away without another word. Elliot chuckles, moving back to his desk. She doesn't look up from her work but he knows the expression that will be on her face. He's familiar with that annoyed twist of her lips accompanied by the buried spark of amusement in her eyes. As he sits, he checks anyway. Because it's a look he enjoys. And to make sure he's right and has memorized it correctly. He has.

His partner flicks him a glare. Only the fresh cup of coffee he's provided her with stops her from flinging her pen across the desk at him. She lifts it to her lips and takes a sip, muttering, "Frickin' grammar Nazi..."

"God is in the details," he tells her with mock sanctimonious import.

Olivia responds with a look he's never seen before. It surprises him so much that he laughs aloud, a quick, loud bark. The new look is almost too quick to catch and file away. He wants to see it again but he's content to wait. He'll just have to keep watching, keep stealthily staring, keep bringing her coffee and checking her atrocious spelling. It thrills him slightly to discover there is more about Olivia Benson's face he doesn't know. Also thrilling is the knowledge that he'll be there to see it, study it, commit it to memory.

His eyesight is sharpening everyday, pulling back into focus the one face that never vanished or even faded, the one face he never forgot or would ever be able to. As it does, he's started seeing things he never saw before or made a strict habit of ignoring. Things that once whispered quietly within him now shout, deafening and inescapable, penetrating years of self-inflicted blindness. Where once he'd forced himself not to stare, now he finds it almost impossible not to. Impossible to turn away or avert his eyes. Impossible not to linger, not to look. Not to see what was right in front him all along.

Because it's there. In the details. The answer to the question her face posed on that curb so many years ago. The answer to the question he's been trying not to ask his heart ever since. Turns out, no amount of denial can stop that question from existing and no amount of silence can prevent an answer from following. The truth was hidden in plain sight the entire time. All he ever had to do was open his eyes. Just open up eyes he'd resolutely sealed shut – and see.

END.