Title: Ways to Make Someone Else Lonelier Than You
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Pairing: Olivia Benson/Brian Cassidy; implied Benson/Stabler
Rating: PG
Length: 2200 words
Disclaimer: I am not Dick Wolf.
AN: Written for the SVU AU game - premise: Olivia doesn't break up with Cassidy in "Closure."
Ways to Make Someone Else Lonelier Than You
by
***
"I want to see you again," Cassidy says, and they're in the hallway where anyone could overhear, or see him grabbing her arm.
So she says, "Uh, sure," just to get him off her back, and she hurries after Elliot. Breaking up with Cassidy in the hallway would be too awkward anyway - she'll do it at dinner.
But they have a few drinks with dinner, and the sex really had been good, and she knows she shouldn't, but. But when Elliot had talked to her about it earlier and she'd complained Cassidy wanted to see her again, Elliot had said, "Well, can you blame him?" Since then she's had a pleasant buzz in her stomach, and she sleeps with Cassidy to relieve it.
This time she spends the night, because Cassidy looks at her so happily, so hopefully. And even though she makes him go by her apartment in the morning so she can get fresh clothes, Elliot sees them come in together and raises an eyebrow at her. She ignores him.
After lunch, she sees Elliot and Cassidy talking over by the coffee, their heads bent together. Elliot, she notes, is doing most of the talking. Cassidy looks a little pale.
It's Friday before she ends up in bed with him again, and afterwards Cassidy is uncharacteristically subdued.
"What's wrong?" she says lightly, turning towards him. He's looking at the ceiling, and his profile is dimly lit by the streetlights coming through the window. He is very still and very pale in the darkness.
He blinks twice, slowly. "Nothing," he says.
"No, really," she says, and pokes him playfully.
He doesn't smile, but does turn his head to look at her. "Did you and Elliot ever...," he trails off.
"What?' she says.
"Have an affair?" He's looking at her very seriously.
She's too surprised to say anything at first. Finally, "No, of course not. Why would you think that?"
He looks at her for a moment, then turns his head back to look at the ceiling. "I just wondered." He looks sad, somehow.
"What did Elliot say to you?" she asks.
"That if I hurt you, he'd rip my balls off and stuff them down my throat."
Olivia laughs, but Cassidy doesn't. "That's just Elliot," she says. "Bri, don't worry about it, he doesn't mean it."
"I know," he says.
"And we *never* had an affair," she says, and the whole thing just seems funny to her now.
"I know," Cassidy says, but he's still not smiling. "I didn't really think you had."
She can't tell what he's thinking, and he seems so solemn and far away. Finally, he turns back towards her and smiles apologetically, kisses her. He spoons her, wraps his arm around her, and falls asleep against her shoulder. As she drifts off to the sound of his breathing, she wonders if Elliot's spooning Kathy tonight, or if they sleep without touching, and then wonders why on earth she's thinking about that.
***
In the car on the way to the ME, Elliot says, "I thought you were going to break up with Cassidy."
She looks out the window. They're passing Central Park. "Yeah," she says, "I was." She can't think of anything else to say, so she just kind of shrugs, a little.
At a red light, Elliot turns and looks at her. "Well," he says, and pauses. "Be careful."
She laughs a little. "Elliot, I'm a grown woman, I think I can handle it."
"I know," Elliot says. The light turns and he focuses on the road again. When she looks at him, he smiles with the corner of his mouth. "Don't break his heart, huh?"
She smiles, and at the ME's they talk DNA and blunt trauma, and Elliot doesn't bring Cassidy up again.
***
She's never been the type to date someone just because it's too much trouble to break up with him, and she doesn't know why she's doing it now. But Brian's a good guy, a decent guy, and it's nice to have someone to fill your evenings. Better than coming home to an empty apartment, anyway, and he understands when she gets called out in the middle of the night for a case, and why sometimes she can't sleep afterwards.
After they've been dating for two months, when Elliot and Olivia come back from a scene, Cassidy's putting his stuff in a cardboard box.
Elliot gives her a look and then gets lost, which she appreciates.
"Brian, what's going on?" she asks, and he doesn't look at her right away. His eyes are a little red, she notices.
He moves a pair of sneakers from his locker to the box, and pauses, holding it. "I'm transferring to Narcotics," he says. He looks at her, and she's right, he's been crying.
She leans against the lockers. "What happened?" she asks, and he shrugs a little.
"I just... this stuff, it gets to me," he says. "Sex crimes. And, y'know. It'd probably be easier on us if I were in another unit."
She nods slowly. "Are you all right?"
He forces a smile and closes his locker. "Yeah. I've got to go find Munch. I'll call you?"
She nods again, and he walks off without looking back. At her desk she picks up a pen and taps it slowly against her thumb, tries to pretend to herself she's not relieved. Cassidy would always pretend he didn't mind when she agreed with Elliot over him about a case, but he did, and it showed. And when it came down to it, she almost always agreed with Elliot.
Elliot sits on the edge of her desk. "What's going on?" he asks, and she sits back.
"He's transferring to Narcotics," she says in her most professional voice.
Elliot nods. "I see."
"Yeah," she says, and opens a file.
"You okay?" Elliot asks.
She rubs her forehead with a knuckle, and shrugs. "Yeah," she says, and when Elliot keeps looking at her, she glances back to make sure Cassidy's still gone. "It'll be easier this way," she says quietly. "Less complicated."
"Yeah," he says.
"It'll be nice to have things simple," she adds.
Elliot smiles ruefully. "It's never simple."
***
So she works SVU and goes home at night and sleeps with Brian, and it's easier. He was never good at keeping their personal life out of work, and she likes not having to worry about losing her job. And if now sometimes Brian complains about her 18 hour days, and about never seeing her, it's still better than before.
***
The phone rings at 3 am - Elliot, with a rape-homicide in the Upper East Side. "I'll be right there," she says, and when she hangs up Cassidy's awake and looking at her, groggy.
"Elliot?" he asks, and she nods, starting to dress. "You have to go now?" he says.
"Rape-homicide waits for no woman," Olivia says, buckling her belt.
"You're meeting Elliot down there?" Cassidy says, and something about his tone makes her bristle.
"He is my partner, Brian."
"I know," Cassidy says. "I just..."
"What?" Olivia says.
"Nothing," Cassidy says. "Go." He rolls away from her to face the wall.
Feeling vaguely guilty, she puts her hand on his shoulder before she leaves. "Love you," she says.
"You too," he mumbles.
***
They marry on a crisp October Saturday, in a church to make Cassidy's parents happy. She almost asked Elliot to give her away, since she doesn't have a father to do it. But Kathy probably wouldn't be thrilled with that, and Brian definitely wouldn't be, so she drops it and walks herself down the aisle.
They honeymoon in Maine, a whole week off, sex and fall foliage and sex. Every day she has to stop herself from calling Elliot to check in, see how the cases are going, see how he's doing without her. On Thursday she finally gives in to the impulse, while Brian's sleeping in. She slips outside in the fall morning, dew cold on the grass, her left hand buried in the pocket of her hoodie and her right holding the cell phone to her ear.
Elliot answers on the first ring. "You're supposed to be on your honeymoon."
He sounds like himself, a little amused, and she hadn't realized until that moment that the whole week had felt off without hearing him. There's an immediate sense of comfort, familiarity, and she is suddenly homesick for the smell of the precinct, the bad coffee, for sitting in their crappy police issue sedan.
"I know," she says. "I am."
"Just couldn't go a week without hearing my voice?" he jokes.
She kicks at a leaf. "Please," she says. "It's been such a relief. I should take vacations more often."
"Yeah," he says, and now he's serious. "You should."
"You're one to talk," she says, and he laughs.
"All right, all right. How's Maine?"
"Gorgeous. How're things at the precinct?"
"Getting along just fine without you, and that's all I'm going to say."
"Elliot," she starts.
"Nope," he says. "You enjoy your honeymoon. You've got plenty of time to be depressed when you get back."
"Okay," she says, and silence settles in. She listens to him breathe, and thinks about all the things she knows better than to say. The hand holding the phone is freezing, her knuckles chilled.
Finally Elliot says softly, "Tell Brian hi."
"Okay," she says, and he hangs up, and she stands there with the phone to her ear for a little longer.
When she turns to go back inside, Brian's standing there in his pajama pants, still barefoot and bare-chested. His hair is sticking up and his expression is dark.
"Hey," he says.
She smiles at him. "Morning, sweetheart," and moves to kiss him.
He steps back. "Was that Elliot on the phone?"
"Yeah," she says brightly. "I called to see how things were going at work."
"On our honeymoon?" Brian says, and he's looking at her like she killed his puppy.
"Brian," she starts, but he turns around and walks back into the B&B like he can't stand to look at her. She feels a little sick.
She waits ten minutes before she follows him up, gives him time to cool off. When she opens the door to their room, he's sitting on the bed leaning forward, his forearms on his knees. When he looks up at her, he seems very tired.
"I can't believe you called him," he says, and Olivia goes over to him, takes his right hand in both of hers.
"Brian," she says. "I didn't call *him*. I called work. He's my partner, we're not... I love you."
Cassidy's looking at the floor, and his face twists. "I just don't understand," he says to the floorboard, "how I'm your husband, but somehow I feel like I'm the affair."
"Brian," she says. "You're not." But when he looks at her, she feels desperately false, unconvincing. He loves her more than she loves him and they both know it. "Elliot and I are *not* having an affair. We would never," she tells him, still trying to fix it.
Cassidy looks her in the eye, and she has to fight not to look away. Finally, he says, "Don't you understand that makes it worse?"
She's at a loss. Eventually, not knowing what else to do, she puts her hand on the back of his head and kisses him, and they make love slowly, in the morning light and the rumpled bedclothes.
When people ask her how the honeymoon was, she tells them it was great.
***
Kathy and Elliot have them over for dinner, the ritual of suburban couplehood. Elliot works the grill, taking advantage of this last Indian Summer Saturday afternoon. Brian plays video games with Dickie, and he looks like a kid himself, trash talking and half jumping off the sofa in excitement.
Sometimes Olivia forgets she's married to him - she sees him with Elliot's son out of the corner of her eye and thinks, "What is Cassidy doing here?" before she remembers.
She goes out to talk to Elliot, brings him a beer as he stands at the grill with a flipper in one hand. He's wearing an apron that says, "Kiss the Cook." She leans against the rail of the deck and they talk idly about the Yankees and Munch's second wife, who'd come by the precinct that week.
"She's hot," Elliot says. "How'd Munch ever end up with her?"
Olivia laughs and hits him on the arm, and when she looks up, Brian and Kathy are standing in the doorway, watching them with identical expressions. Like the Little Match Girl, looking in the window at places she doesn't belong.
Elliot follows her look and sees them too. "Hey," he says cheerfully, as though he didn't notice. "Think the chicken's just about done."
Kathy is faster than Brian at going back to normal, so fast Olivia's left wondering if she'd just imagined that expression. She remembers that Kathy and Elliot have had a long time to practice this, pretending things don't matter, pretending everything's all right. She wonders if she and Brian will ever be like that. She wonders if Brian would be happier if she did have an affair with Elliot, and then she wonders if she would be.
She wonders if Kathy and Brian will always be standing there, knowing they have to take what they can get, what the job leaves them.
"Good," Kathy says. "We're all ready. We're just waiting for you."
***
END