![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
human_veilyou’re not you when you’re hungry
elliot/olivia | ~3k | teen | 5+1 things
spans from pre-canon to future stuff. no major warnings. enjoy <3“You know, you could just—” He makes a weird, twisting motion with his arm, and it takes Olivia a second to understand what he’s trying to say.
“What,” she asks, eyebrows raised. “Steal?”
cheez-its: original flavour (1998)
She’s standing by the vending machine just off the elevator when he meets her for the first time. Her mouth’s set in a thin pout, her forehead creased in concentration as one hand rests on either side of the metal box, the tip of one clunky black shoe digging into its front with quick, loud kicks. She’s definitely swearing under her breath.
Elliot raises his eyebrows, a quiet laugh already caught in his throat.
“Try the left side,” he calls, grinning. “‘Bout two thirds down — use the side of your fist.”
He’s here early today—had made up a call about a case to escape Sick Toddler duty. Kathy will be pissed at him for it later (is already pissed at him for it now), but he’d held Dickie for all of three minutes before he’d had to pass him off to Maureen and step back the way he came, the blue shirt he’d originally picked to wear ruined by vomit a shade of green too neon to be natural. It wasn’t that he didn’t care—he did—it was just that the new transfer was meant to come in today, some detective green off a short stint in homicide set to be his replacement partner, and showing up smelling of kid sick was more of a week two kind of thing.
The woman jolts at the sound of his voice. They’re the only ones in the hall at this hour, so it’s not surprising, but it does make him feel a little guilty. Too quick, she turns to face him. Her hair sways with it, short, dark strands catching on her lip as she goes, the face that greets him flushed with embarrassment.
She’s blinking at him, her eyes wide, like a kid that’s been caught out-of-bounds by a teacher. Carefully, she eases back into a casual stance, her fingers pulling at the sides of a blazer that looks two sizes too big. He can’t help but notice her cheeks are tinged pink.
(It’s cute.)
“Uh,” the woman says, hand lifting to wipe the hair away from her mouth.
Elliot laughs.
“Here,” he says. He holds out his briefcase, a quiet request, and she takes it skeptically, her face scrunching up in something close to disbelief as he steps past her, his arm outstretched. It morphs into a smile as he hits the machine just right, her early-morning snack falling from its spot in limbo with a quiet, dull thud.
He bends to retrieve it for her, eyebrow raised when he pulls back with a pack of Cheez-Its.
The woman shrugs, a subtle thing. “I skipped breakfast,” she explains.
Elliot nods, straightening up. “Nice,” he deadpans. He swaps the Cheez-Its for his briefcase, gives the woman a once over. He’s never seen her before (would have remembered it if he had), and she’s got none of the usual tell-tale signs of a vic coming in to report. “You new?” he settles on.
“First day,” the woman confirms. She’s smiling—genuine, this time. It lights up her whole face, big and bright, her brown eyes glittering with it. She cradles the Cheez-Its in the crook of her elbow and holds out a hand. “Olivia Benson.”
Her grip is solid, firm. Her skin soft and warm against his palm. It’s hard to look away from her smile.
“Elliot Stabler.”
m&ms: crispy, mini, and original (2002)
They’re three hours into what will likely be an all-day event, their perp’s defence lawyer the kind of guy who likes to waffle on just to waste time. It’s annoying, sure, and they’ve definitely got better things to be doing, but Alex has been warning them both for a week. They’re to sit their asses down outside the courtroom and wait, no ifs, buts, or toilet breaks. It was their “zealous recklessness” that had got them into this mess, she’d said, and so now they’d pay the price.
Really, it’s not that harrowing a punishment. There are worse things to be stuck doing—worse people to be stuck with. If it weren’t for the fact that her stomach started growling thirty minutes ago, Olivia doubts she’d even mind that much.
The hunger had come on slowly, then all at once, the bright blur of colours in the vending machine across the hall more alluring the longer she was stuck there, staring. It made it impossible to ignore.
After forty-two minutes, she caves.
“You got any change?” she says, head turned Elliot’s way. The tentative hope dissipates as he shakes his head in answer.
“Gave it to Kathleen this morning,” he says, then goes quiet, contemplative. He looks between her, the vending machine, the quiet hall; she doesn’t miss the grin that breaks out across his face. “You know, you could just—”
He makes a weird, twisting motion with his arm, and it takes Olivia a second to understand what he’s trying to say.
“What,” she asks, eyebrows raised. “Steal?”
Elliot shrugs, as if to say, Duh. “It’s, like, two bucks,” he reasons. “The city will be fine.” He leans in, two fingers poking at her left shoulder. “Plus,” he says, voice a whisper, “your skinny little arms would be perfect for it.”
The sentence is barely out of his mouth before she’s on the defensive. “My arms are not—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Elliot laughs, loud enough to drown her out. He’s already out of his seat, winter coat discarded as he steps toward the machine, the hallway given one last cautionary glance before he drops to a low crouch. “Come here,” he says, finger beckoning. The look in his eye is downright mischievous. “I’ll teach you how to do it.”
Ten minutes later they’ve got three packets of M&Ms and one pack of mixed nuts scattered on the seat between them, both of them struggling to bite back laughter as Elliot tries and fails to throw tiny chocolates in the air and catch them in his mouth. Two tries end up on the floor, another two hit him in his eye; when he looks like he might just succeed, Olivia reaches out in a quick, fluid motion to catch it mid-air, her face lit with a shit-eating grin as she puts the blue M&M on her tongue and draws it into her mouth.
When she’s eventually called to the stand, her thumb’s still stained blue with the dye.
peeled snacks: gently dried fruit (2005)
“You said it was next week—”
Elliot’s on the phone, tucked into a corner not far off from where they’ve been instructed to wait. He’s speaking in hushed, heated tones, his jaw clenched the way it gets when he’s trying to keep his cool. Olivia’s almost certain he’s only making the effort because they’re in a pre-school’s administration office, the secretary about four feet away from where she’s curled up on a too-small chair, but she appreciates him trying, anyway.
The finer details of the call are lost on her, but she manages to make out the big ones: Kathy, the kids, something about a party or a birthday or a stay with Elliot’s mother-in-law. She’s been trying not to listen, or at least trying to pretend she’s not been listening. She’s not entirely sure she’s succeeding.
The call ends with the definitive clack of a cell phone snapping shut, Elliot’s sigh long and loud as he pockets the device and walks back to where she is. She goes to ask the usual, All good? but he stops her before she can so much as open her mouth, the look he gives her dark and unamused.
“Don’t,” he says, so Olivia laughs instead, soft and airy and short-lived, her head tilting as she concedes.
They’re meant to be interviewing a group of little girls—a couple of potential victims of their latest pervert, the guy an ex-volunteer who got handsy with the Thursday reading group—but instead they’ve been stuck inside this office for going on an hour. There’s an assembly they just can’t interrupt, apparently, but the girls will be with them very soon, if they could just sit tight, please, thank you.
Even Olivia’s patience is wearing thin.
“I gotta use the bathroom,” she says after a while, struggling to get to her feet as her jacket catches on the chair, the zipper clanking against the wood when she pulls it free.
Elliot hums, neither here nor there. “Good luck,” he tells her, looking comically large where he sits flicking through a child’s magazine. It’s bright purple, a child star she doesn’t recognise smiling up at her from the cover. He’s got it open to the puzzle page.
Olivia bites back a grin.
She doesn’t actually need the restroom—wouldn’t go here even if she did. She just wants to stretch her legs, thinks maybe a snack might lift Elliot’s spirits. They were meant to take lunch two hours ago but hadn’t had the chance.
The school’s on one of those health kicks, the vending machines stacked with nuts and seeds and dried fruit, the kind of muesli bars no kid aged three to five would ever want to eat willingly packaged in bright, blinding colours and sat in perfect rows behind the glass. Olivia considers going back empty-handed when she sees the selection, but hunger is growing in the pit of her stomach, and something is better than nothing. They could probably use the nutrients, anyway.
She double checks no one’s watching before she drops down, jacket pulled off one shoulder as she slips her hand inside. It takes a minute, but she eventually scores a packet of dried fruit, the bag white and orange with MANGO written on the bottom; when she throws it into Elliot’s lap, the look he gives her screams concern.
“It’s all I could reach,” she shrugs, bumping his leg as she steps over him, a smile pulling at her mouth when he cracks the bag open and eats exactly one before handing it her way, a grimace on his face.
gatorade: cool blue (2007)
There are three bodies in the morgue and another in the hospital, a fifth victim no doubt on their way. Elliot’s been awake thirty, forty hours, and he knows Olivia’s right there with him. They’ve been running on adrenaline for days—on indignation, frustration, rage—but they’re stuck under fluorescent white lights while the doctors work their magic, and the quiet, late-night bustle of the hospital isn’t doing them any favours.
Elliot can already feel his energy draining, knows it won’t be long now ‘til one of them crashes, never mind if they can afford to or not. Olivia looks dead on her feet, too. Her shoulders are slouched where she sits in a shitty, plastic chair, her head bowed forward, long hair hiding half her face from view. Her eyes are shut, he can tell that much; she doesn’t even notice when he steps away.
“I know you’re into that herbal, organic-blend tea crap now,” he says when he gets back, a bottle of Gatorade shoved into her hands, “but I don’t care. You’re not passing out on my watch.”
Olivia blinks a little, some of the exhaustion disappearing as she zeroes in on what’s in his hand. She laughs, all air, and takes the bottle, her gaze flicking past him to where the vending machine sits a little way away, a couple other people crowded around it.
“You pay for it?” she asks, looking back at him. She almost sounds surprised.
“Uh-huh,” he says.
He gets an impressed little oooh sound in answer, Olivia mostly teasing as she takes the Gatorade and untwists the cap. “Who says chivalry is dead?”
Elliot snorts. “Yeah, well,” he says, taking a swing of his matching blue bottle. “You know me. I’m a romantic.”
It’s dry, a deadpan. He settles back in his seat as Olivia laughs again, her side warm and solid and inviting when it leans against his.
snickers (2011)
They shouldn’t be here—it’s not their case. There’s a dead kid, sure, but the Special qualities stop there. There’s no sex crime, no signs of foul-play beyond the usual standard for this sort of thing. They sure as shit shouldn’t have been pulled from the Bately case to work a run-of-the-mill murder, but someone’s nephew’s wife’s father is or was a governor, so here they are, ready for fuckin’ duty.
It’s a good thing being cheery isn’t part of the job description.
“For fuck’s sake, Elliot,” Olivia snaps, sighing as the complaints start up again. It’s the umpteenth time she’s heard them—which is ridiculous, because she agrees—and her nerves are starting to fray. Melinda has already kicked them out because of the irritated, incessant grumbling, and Olivia’s starting to wish she could do the same thing. “Give it a rest. There’s nothing we can do.”
It’s not as soothing as she’d hoped it’d be. Elliot glares, shoulders tight with tension, and Olivia lets out another sigh.
“I’m gonna take a walk,” she says. Knows better than to let the irritation escalate. “Call me if we get the report, okay?”
He doesn’t answer, just lets her go, already back to brooding. Twenty minutes pass before she comes back, her arm cradled close to her chest as she rounds the corner near the M.E’s office, her mouth downturned in pain. There’s a bruise forming just below her right elbow, a dull ache settling in from where she’d (almost) got it stuck in the vending machine slot. It’s not her fault, not really; it was one of the newer models, the internal design harder to work around. She’d gone for the Snickers despite her better judgement and paid the price, but she doesn’t regret it. It’d all worked out in the end. She’d managed to get two: one for her and one for him.
She calls Elliot’s name as she comes close, a quiet El all the warning he’s given before she chucks the chocolate bar at his head, his whole body flinching backwards as his mind plays catch-up, scrambling to make sense of what it’s seeing.
“What th—” he starts, blinking up at her, the Snickers held loose in his left hand.
Olivia grins. “You’re not you when you’re hungry,” she explains, a poor imitation of the ad.
The responding groan only spurs her on.
+ 1
honey buns (2023)
Noah’s got a dance recital at seven. She’s meant to finish work at five, but it’s a quarter past six when she finally leaves her office, her purse thrown over one shoulder as she passes by the break room to pick up Elliot, who’s been hanging around her precinct since four. He’s sitting next to Velasco, twirling a napkin between his fingers as he talks shop; he drops it when she enters, his whole body turning toward her, as if directed by something divine.
“Hey,” he says, his face softening. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah.” She smiles as Velasco stands and slips out of the room, a murmured farewell thrown their way, and smooths her blazer where it rests over her arm. “Sorry I made you wait.”
Elliot shrugs, shakes his head. “It’s fine,” he tells her, and she knows he means it. “Did you get a chance to eat?”
The plan had been an early dinner, just the two of them, but that had died somewhere around 5:15.
“No,” she says, “but—” She breaks off, lifts the wrist that wears her watch, the message clear: We don’t have the time.
Elliot comes ‘round, closer, his hand brushing her hip as he passes. There’s a smirk playing at his mouth, something soft and secretive; it only grows when he tilts his head toward the vending machine.
“Here,” he says. “How ‘bout we do it ‘99 style?”
Olivia raises an eyebrow but doesn’t stop him. Elliot drops to one knee, his arm shoved through the slot while she plays lookout, barely a minute passing before he turns to her with a red-blue bag, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Honey Bun for my honey bun?” he asks, still kneeling. It almost looks like a proposal.
“Gross,” Olivia laughs, but she takes the sweets, anyway, the packet crinkling in her hand when she holds it up. “This is stealing, you know,” she tells him. “I could throw you in the holding cell.”
Elliot gets to his feet with a soft grunt and a crack in his left knee, and she swallows down the old man insult that sits on the tip of her tongue as he steps close again, a challenge in his eye.
“Yeah?” he says, low, and she knows that voice. It sends a tingle down her spine. “You wanna arrest me, Captain?”
He holds out both hands like the absolute bastard that he is, practically inviting her to pull out her cuffs. Part of her wants to—and would, if not for Noah’s recital—and the other part struggles to smooth her face into cool indifference. From the look in his eye, she’s failing spectacularly.
“Just you wait,” she warns, watching as Elliot’s grin only widens, his tongue held between his teeth while his arms fall back to his sides.
“Come on,” he says, a picture of innocence. “We don’t wanna be late.”
He steps past her, shoulder bumping hers as he goes. Olivia is helpless to follow; she stays a step behind, tongue running over her teeth as she thinks about how to get him back later.
