Chapter Text
Olivia has never wanted anything the way she wants this.
The thought follows her into the bar and stis with her as she orders her drink of choice for the night: a dose of whiskey, neat. Anything other than that won’t cut it because it’s been there all day, lodged beneath her ribs and taking the air out of her lungs. She has always known how to want things responsibly, with contingencies and backup plans, but this is something that has always existed, nowhere and everywhere all at once (despite Serena’s relentless attempts to talk her out of it).
Olivia has never wanted anything the way she wants to be a mother.
She wraps her hand around the glass and stares at the amber liquid inside it. Earlier, she told herself it was fine. That she understood. That the decision made sense on paper. Who would give a baby to a woman who lives for her job, after all? A woman who is single, has no family, no support system? As much as it hurts, she spent the entire day convincing herself that they're right: she isn’t fit to be a mother.
But now that she is alone, the words finally catch up to her. It’s so tragic it’s almost comical.
Not approved.
It plays on a loop in her head, stripped of its politeness now, reduced to what it really means: she isn’t stable enough to provide a healthy environment for a child. A snort escapes Olivia’s lips before she can refrain it. She spent years of her life dedicating herself to her career, to put away men like Joseph Hollister, so much that she put all of her other plans on hold and now she can’t afford IVF, she isn’t fit to adopt a child and she has no life partner to do it with.
What they don’t see, of course, is how dedicated she is, how much space she has already carved out in her heart for someone she hasn’t even met yet, how ready she is to make this work, to be a mother, a far better mother than the one she had. Olivia knows she won’t give up, but hearing what she heard from the adoption agency hit her like a bucket of cold water and for tonight, at least, she allows herselv to mourn the hope that is now just out of reach.
This is why Olivia came to the bar. For the quiet, for the anonymity of a place where she can sit with her grief and let it be small and private and, at the same time, a place that’s noisy enough to not let her wander too far inside her own thoughts. But since the universe has a way of annoying her even further, someone at the bar says the word ‘cops’ followed by clear mockery laughter.
“The whole department is a joke,” the man says. “The last time I needed the NYPD...”
And on he goes. Olivia rolls her eyes, hiding her reaction behind her glass of whiskey because she doesn’t need another stressor right now (the stressor here being civilians behaving like assholes). She knows the NYPD has its problems, but come on. If she was younger maybe she would say something, but years on the force made Olivia learn the cost of responding to that kind of talk, especially off duty, especially when she is tired, so she lets it roll past her, lets the words slide off like they always do and then someone says something worse and the laughter continues and she rolls her eyes again, sparing a quick glance at the group.
But it’s the man on the other end of the bar that, for some inconcievable reason, really draws her attention.
“I don’t know, I think it’s nice for them to know that they can fuck things up anytime because there will always be someone to clean up their messes,” another guy from the group says and Olivia watches as the piercing blue eyes narrow toward the group. His expression is almost blunt, maybe being so good at conceiling his emotions is part of the job, but Olivia notices the silent judgment crossing his features. “Just follow the news. They’ve been screwing up more and more lately.”
Assholes, his face seems to say.
Olivia exhales through her nose. Of course Tucker would be here, tonight of all nights, at the bar she usually comes to. Their eyes meet for half a second, nothing more than an accident, and she makes quick work of looking away, lifting the glass to her lips and making sure her face says beware of danger, stay away.
Apparently, it doesn’t.
She watches him discreetly through the mirror as he stands up and closes the distrance between them, seeming to consider his actions for a brief second before taking the empty seat beside her. The detective takes another slow sip of whiskey without acknowledging his presence, hoping it will make him go away, but, once again, the universe isn’t being nice to her tonight.
“Drinking alone?” His voice sound as it normally does, except now there isn’t much of the hardness he usually displays at work.
Olivia lets out a short, humorless laugh. Of course this is how the night goes. Of course the one place she came to be left alone delivers Sergeant Ed Tucker, the greatest IAB bastard, right to her side as if the day hadn’t already wrung her dry. As if being told she isn’t mother material isn’t enough, now Tucker gets a front-row seat to her unreaveling.
“Do I look like I’m looking for company?” She says without looking at him.
Tucker doesn’t rise to the bait, though, neither does he retreat. He settles onto the stool beside her and rests his forearms on the bar.
“By the looks of it, I’m guessing you heard it too,” he says after a moment, nodding subtly toward the group still talking too loudly. She doesn’t say anything, just sips her whiskey again. “They’ve got a lot of opinions for people who don’t wear a badge.”
She hums in agreement now, her eyebrows rising toward her hairline briefly while she rests her glass on the wood. He stays silent for another long moment and Olivia feels relief taking over her, assuming he will get bored and leave, but he doesn’t.
“I guess our line of work makes you appreaciate some peace and quiet,” Tucker says.
Finally she exhales and turns just enough to face him.
“What are you doing here, Tucker?”
He meets her gaze without flinching. There’s no smirk on his lips, no trace of mockery on his face, just that unreadable look that has made her distrust him in the first place.
“Making conversation,” he offers simply.
“Exactly,” Olivia replies. “Why are you making conversation with me?”
It’s an honest question because she wants to know what in her expression gave the impression that she was willing to make conversation with him. He doesn’t answer right away, for her dismay, but he does study her in a way she doesn’t appreciate, like he is reading something written plainly across her face.
“Because,” he says at least, “you look like you’ve had a rough day.” She stiffens instinctively, but Tucker just exhales deeply and sips his whiskey before speaking again, staring at his glass. “And I can sympathize with that.”
For a moment, she feels almost guilty at how she has always been so quick to judge him. Of course he is a rat bastard who clearly has a personal vendetta against SVU, especially against Elliot, but in the end of the day Tucker is a man who does a damn difficult job and Olivia realizes, reluctantly, that she doesn’t know anything about him.
She brushes the thought away quickly, though. She doesn’t want to know anything about him.
“At the same time we’re expected to be humane for the sake of our job, people expect us to be these moral absolutes who can understand absolutely everything without getting affected by it, but the job doesn’t really allow that.”
The way he says it makes it clear he is talking from personal experience, but if Olivia were a little bit paranoid she would say he knows about her recent situation with the adoption agency.
“It’s not personal, it’s just... policy. It’s for the best.” He lets out a breath through his nose. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost you something.”
Olivia snorts softly, finally turning just enough to acknowledge him fully. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re complaining about your job.”
“Ha,” Tucker lets out a short huff of a laugh but there’s a hint of a smile on the corner of his lips. “Believe me, I don’t expect sympathy.” He glances at her then. “But that’s kind of my point. When I say I’m just doing my job, you and your partner hear vendetta, like I wake up hoping to make your lives harder.”
“You don’t?” Olivia gasps, clearly mocking him.
That earns her an eye roll, something she probably never saw coming from him.
“No, I don’t.” His mouth quirks, just barely. “Thruth is, I’m usually just the guy stuck doing something no one else wants to.”
“Something that needs to be done, anyway,” she says, so low she isn’t sure he will hear it.
But he nods, almost absentminded, and the silence settles between them again.
It’s a miserable kind of quiet. Not comforting, but not uncomfortable either; it just feels wrong. Olivia stares into her glass and thinks, not for the first time tonight, that none of this makes any sense, especially the fact that she is sitting shoulder to shoulder with Ed Tucker of all people. And worse: he is the only one making sense right now.
Olivia’s jaw tightens. She didn’t come here to talk. She told Elliot and that was it. He was supposed to be the only one who knew because she told herself she didn’t want the looks, the pity, the well-meaning reassurances and Olivia knows Elliot is the only one capable of not doing that. Yet, the words press against her throat like they’ve been waiting for an opening and before she can stop herself, she parts her lips again.
“The adoption agency I was looking into decided I’m not fit to be a parent.”
It’s out there now and she doesn’t dare look at him because, deep down, she is afraid of what she will find. The pity she desperately doesn’t want? Confusion about what the hell she is talking about? Dismissal because he has no business knowing about it?
Instead, Tucker snorts. He really, fully snorts.
Olivia’s eyebrows draw together immediately. “What’s so funny?”
“They’re idiots,” he says witout hesitation and he sounds so honest she leans back a little. “They’re idiots and a little short-sighted.”
“Excuse me?” She blinks at him, searching for sarcasm, for some hidden angle, and finding none. “I mean... Thank you, I guess?” She frowns again. “But you don’t even know me.”
“No,” Tucker agress easily. “No personally, but I know your work and I know your record.” He pauses briefly, looking at her, and she has never realized how blue his eyes are. “Every time IAB got a complaint with your name on it, you went ahead and dismantled it. You didn’t cut corners, you never bent the truth, you did it step by step and proved you weren’t guilty. That tells me plenty about your integrity.”
Olivia swallows, genuinely caught off guard. She wasn’t expecting that, not from Tucker, anyway. She always thought he hated her. But it somehow makes her anger and her sadness ease a little inside her chest because Tucker has no reason to lie to her. They don’t know each other, they’re not friends, he doesn’t need to comfort her, yet he is there saying all those things and he sounds so brutally honest that she doesn't know what to do with it.
“You know how many good cops crumble the moment someone looks too closely, even if there’s nothing wrong?” Since she doesn’t say anything, he continues. “You never did that. That’s how sure you are of yourself.”
Olivia scoffs softly, the usual defensiveness starting to show. “That just means I know how to do my job.”
“It means so much more than that, Olivia,” he says and she is surprised at how easily her name rolls on his tongue. “It means you care about what you’re doing enough to make sure you’re making it right, even when it costs you personally.”
She almost winces. He got it exactly right.
“I honestly don’t see how someone like that could be anything but fit to be a parent.”
For a moment, Olivia can’t speak. She looks back at her glass, at the faint ring of condensation it leaves on the bar, and her fingers curl around it with more strenght than she intended too.
“Well,” she says finally, “apparently the people whose opinion actually matter disagree.”
Tucker shakes his head once, almost to himself, and finishes his whiskey with a long sip.
"As I said before, they're idiots," he says. “These people don’t always recognize the things that actually count too.”
She lets out a small breath, not daring to look up, to look at him, not even through the mirror. Honestly, she doesn’t even want to look at herself right now because she hasn’t cried yet and once it comes, it will be ugly.
“Careful, Tucker,” she mutters. “Keep talking like that and I might start thinking you’re on my side.”
He chuckles, a small smile curving on his lips.
“Don’t worry, I won’t make a habit of it.” Then, he signals to the bartender. “Two whiskeys, please. Neat. Put it on my tab.”
Despite herself, Olivia finally looks at him, her eyes slightly narrowed and her mind forcing herself to ask him what the fuck he is doing. Instead, when the bartender refills their glasses, Tucker raises his, proposing a toast she easily accepts. Somehow, the tightness in her chest eases, just a fraction, and she hates that it’s Ed Tucker sitting beside her when it does.