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Officially, IAB has to be present when Olivia gets her gun and shield back after her name has been cleared. It doesn’t mean she has to acknowledge Tucker’s presence in Cragen’s office when it happens, though.
“Detective,” the lieutenant greets neutrally, when she steps into her captain’s office on a Sunday afternoon.
She’s grateful that Cragen had arranged for her to come in on a day when the squad room would be as quiet as possible. She knows Munch and Fin are on call this weekend, but besides that, the bullpen is quiet. Even the uni’s seem to be making themselves scarce.
She doesn’t respond to Tucker. Even if he had the balls to call her out for disrespecting a superior officer- and she doesn’t think he will after the last few days- her captain would have her back.
Tucker says nothing.
“Captain, you wanted to see me?” She already knows why she is here, but she wants to make sure Tucker knows that she’s ignoring him.
“Detective- Olivia. I know this has been a nightmare for you. Thank you for trusting myself and your fellow detectives to properly investigate this.” Tucker rolls his eyes but has the wherewithal not to respond.
“Thank you, Captain. Thank you for trusting me.”
He clears his throat.
“Your suspension has been lifted, with back pay. None of this will be reflected in your jacket, and if this investigation is ever used against you, I will make it my personal duty to see that someone is punished for it. That is a promise.”
She nods.
“I appreciate that, Captain.”
“Your gun and shield,” he says, handing them over. “Now go enjoy the rest of your time off. I’ll see you on Tuesday.”
Olivia thanks him again, then makes her way towards the elevator bay. She rolls her eyes when she notices Tucker right behind her.
“You can’t be serious.”
“There’s only one way out of this building, Benson.”
“Try the fire escape.”
“You and I both know that thing hasn’t been inspected since the 80’s,” he retorts. “It’ll disintegrate the second someone steps out onto that rusty death trap.”
“Wouldn’t that be tragic.”
He looks like he’s about to respond when the elevator finally opens. Olivia steps on and briefly considers blocking him from getting on behind her, but decides against it. If she’s weighing her pettiness against her dignity, she decides to let her dignity win this round.
They have six floors to go until they reach the ground floor when Tucker speaks.
“Look-“
“I’m not talking to you,” she interrupts, staring straight ahead.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t seriously-“
And then the elevator jerks to a violent stop. The screen no longer indicates what floor they’re on; just two X’s meant to indicate what they already know- they’re not moving.
“No,” she mutters, out loud, jamming her finger into the G* button. “No, no no, this can’t be- this can’t possibly be-“
“Shit,” Tucker says, and at least they can agree on something.
“This can’t be fucking happening.”
“Would you quit pressing buttons, Benson?”
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah. We sit tight and wait for them to fix the fucking elevator.”
But she’s still pressing buttons and it’s starting to look erratic.
“Fuck. FUCK, shit, fuck-“
“Benson.”
“No, no, no-“
“BENSON.”
She turns toward him, eyes glowering with contempt. It didn’t occur to him that this might be more than just anger at the inconvenience of being stuck for a few minutes. She’s panicking.
He takes a deep breath.
“Benson, you gotta relax. I can hear the buzzer. They know we’re stuck. We’ll be out of here soon, probably just a few minutes. Alright?”
She huffs, stepping backwards until she hits the back of the elevator, electing to stare ahead instead of acknowledging him. She’s not obviously panicking anymore, or pressing buttons, so he backs up and does the same.
Five minutes pass.
Then ten.
They both slide down the wall and sit.
By some minor miracle, she sees a text come through from Cragen.
“Fire department’s working on it,” she reports. “Cragen says they think maybe 20-30 more minutes.”
“Could be worse,” he tries.
She snorts.
“I mean, sure, I could still be in Rikers.”
He rolls his eyes.
“I was doing my job, Detective. All the evidence pointed to you, down to DNA. You ever let someone walk when you had DNA evidence?”
She doesn’t respond.
Five more minutes pass.
She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the wall, sighing. The silence isn’t even awkward, her hatred for him is that palpable. The consistency of how much she obviously can’t stand him is almost comforting, in a weird way.
“It’s not the IAB investigation I had a problem with,” she says quietly. Eyes still closed.
He opens his eyes, turning towards her.
“Then what-“
“It was the fact that you dug into my personal medical information. And on top of that, you thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell I would believe that my partner gave you that information.”
“You’ve never looked into a perp’s psychiatric history for motive?”
“You and I both know you didn’t get that info through any legal means. Not a warrant. Certainly not a court-ordered psych eval. I know that because I didn’t have one of those,” she responds, venomous. “And like I said before, I went out of my way to see a private shrink. I can’t even begin to guess how you got that information.”
“Alright,” he concedes. “We agree it was a shitty lie to say your partner told me. He’s a rat bastard, but he’s loyal, I’ll give him that. How do you know he didn’t give it away with his body language when I asked him about it?”
“Because he doesn’t…” she shifts uncomfortably, “know about it.”
Oh.
Well.
He deflates.
“It, uh. It really was just rumors,” he admits, awkwardly. “No one told me anything. You, uh, you don’t have to worry about who you trusted with that information,” he finishes quietly.
She says nothing.
For a man of so few words, generally, he’s starting to really hate this silence. Maybe it’s the guilt creeping into the base of his spine.
“Benson, I’m… the rest of the investigation, I stand by. I was doing my job and following the evidence.”
She huffs.
“But,” he continues, “I am sorry, for using that against you in the interrogation. That wasn’t fair. You, you had every right to your privacy there.”
“You’re goddamn right I did,” she snipes, vicious.
Her eyes are open now, but she still won’t look at him. Just stares ahead, angrily boring a hole in the wall in front of her with her eyes.
“Yeah,” he says.
Olivia doesn’t seem inclined to accept his apology, and he doesn’t really have anything else to say, so they lapse into silence once more.
When she speaks again, minutes later, it’s quieter. More subdued.
“I went undercover last year.”
He says nothing.
“I went under as an inmate at Sealview Correctional. We were looking for a guard that was raping inmates. I found him,” she smirks, wry and empty and awful. “Really, he found me.”
He looks away, down at his shoes. His hands.
“I know it sounds insane, but I kind of… forgot it could still happen to me. I mean, the thought barely crossed my mind when I requested the UC op. I had to convince my captain to let me do it, and I was so sure I’d never let it happen. It didn’t… it never occurred to me, how completely helpless I’d be if I was cuffed.
“I had no leverage. He literally just… tossed me onto a mattress like I weighed nothing, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t get my feet under me. And then he climbed on top of me and I just started screaming.”
He doesn’t want to know this. He doesn’t want to be hearing this. It makes his stomach turn.
“In stressful situations time usually moves quickly, for me. After traumatic events, people say things like ‘oh I can’t remember, it all happened so fast.’ Vics say it all the time, and I always got that. I could totally relate to it. But,” her breath hitches, “The whole thing felt like hours. He enjoyed watching me struggle, and panic, and beg. I begged him not to hurt me. And he just laughed and took his time because it was fun for him. It felt like hours, but when Fin found me he said it couldn’t have been more than like twenty minutes.” Olivia stares ahead, bewildered, as if she still can’t believe it.
“Anyway,” she continues, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “that’s why I was in therapy.”
There’s nothing he could say that doesn’t sound trite or patronizing or both.
“Jesus. I’m-“
“Yeah,” she sighs, resigned. Defeated.
He waits a moment before something occurs to him.
“Wait. You’re telling me you let your partner believe you didn’t go to therapy for that?”
“Well, he doesn’t even know that happened, so.”
“He doesn’t know? This happened on the job and he doesn’t know? How the fuck did you manage that?”
“Told him if he read the casefile I’d ask for a new partner by the end of the day.”
“Jesus Christ, Benson.”
He waits a few minutes to gather the courage to say what he’s thinking. He’s still not there yet when she speaks.
“Say it, Tucker. I can hear you thinking.”
He shifts. This is so far beyond the confines of their professional relationship, which has historically consisted of her despising him.
“Just… even I know you two are close. It’s a pain in the ass for my investigations, how close you are. You think he wouldn’t want to know?”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“The fuck do you mean ‘irrelevant?’ You’re a sex crimes detective. He’s your partner. You think it’s irrelevant that you were assaulted on the job and your male partner might wanna know about it?”
“I know he wants to know about it. I don’t want him to know about it.”
“Why? Stabler’s a bastard, but he doesn’t strike me as the type of man that would treat you differently.”
“For the same reason you’re referring to him as a man in reference to how he would treat me.”
“…What?”
She huffs.
“You’re differentiating. You’re referencing him as a man, in relation to me, implying that it matters that I’m a woman.”
“It does.”
“It didn’t use to!” She shouts, slamming her hand on the floor.
God.
He takes a moment, staring at his hands.
“I don’t… pretend to understand what it’s like to be a woman in this job. As much as you hate me, Benson, and I know you do, I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for the work you do and the amount of bullshit you’ve probably dealt with your entire life, both on and off the job.”
She doesn’t interject, so he keeps going.
“The fact that you’re a woman, and the fact that I am acknowledging that you’re a woman, does not mean I think less of you as a cop. But you and I both know there are certain things that happen to women on this job that don’t happen to men at nearly the same rate.”
He shifts his weight, continues to speak.
“Years ago, when I worked homicide, I had a female partner. I liked her a lot, and we were close. If something like that had happened to her while we were partners, I would have wanted to know about it, so I could be there for her. It would have killed me to know she went through something like that, and she felt like she couldn’t tell me. I know lots of men on the force are Neanderthals, but Stabler isn’t, where you’re concerned. He sees you as an equal. It’s none of my business, but you haven’t told me to shut up yet so I think at least some of this is registering. Tell him.”
She doesn’t respond, but he can tell by her fidgeting that she at least heard him.
“If nothing else,” he pushes forward, “it feels wrong that I know and he doesn’t.”
He catches a fleeting, barely-there half-smile in her side profile.
“That does feel insane, actually. God.”
“I, uh-“
And the elevator lurches.
Olivia breathes a sigh of relief as they finally resume their descent. Tucker watches her fidget with her phone, her watch, her keys, trying to shake herself out of the weird bubble of reality they’d found themselves in for the past twenty minutes. He can feel her retreating from the uncharacteristically emotional side of her he’d just witnessed. He wonders if he’ll ever see that side of her again.
When they finally step off the elevator, her captain is waiting in the lobby with several firefighters. He gives her an apologetic look at the sight of Tucker.
“Shouldn’t happen again for another twenty years,” Cragen says. “Get outta here while there’s still daylight.”
She smiles and makes her way towards the street.
By sheer happenstance, they both turn left on the sidewalk outside of the building.
“Oh my god,” she says, exasperated. Back to the old dynamic, then.
“I’m walking to 1PP. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I just need the subway. Don’t follow me.”
“I’ve got better things to do with my time than learn where you do your grocery shopping, Benson.”
She rolls her eyes and ignores him for two blocks.
When she finds her subway entrance, Olivia drifts towards it wordlessly, then stops abruptly at the top of the steps, turning back towards him.
“Tucker,” she starts. “If you repeat any of that-“
He holds up a hand.
“Relax, Benson. I’m not a scumbag. You don’t… you don’t have to worry about me.”
She looks like she might have a more lengthy response, but in the end she just nods.
“Thank you.”
It makes his heart ache a little, how sincerely grateful she sounds.