badlydecomposed

adrianna_m_scovill (Olivia Benson/Rafael Barba, Teen And Up Audiences)

“We’re both so afraid of needing someone,” she whispered, and his heart stuttered. “Why are we like this?”

“I don’t know,” he said, but that wasn’t true. He knew why, and so did she. They’d both learned hard lessons in their lives, lessons that had started early. “But…” He swallowed past the lump of fear. “But I do need you, Liv. When I’m with you, I feel like myself. Without you, I don’t even know who I am.”

She let out a shaky breath and pulled her arms back. He dropped his to let her go, but she didn’t draw all the way back. She slid her hands to his sides and held his shirt, lifting her head to look at him. Her face was splotchy, her eyes puffy and red. He reached up to pull aside a loose tendril of hair that had stuck to the tears on her cheek.

“I need you, too,” she said. Her chin quivered, and she caught her lower lip with her teeth, shaking her head. “But I’m not the sun, Rafael. I’m not the center of anything. I’m damaged, I know that, and I don’t know if I can get over my fear. If you, loving me, if that…melted your wings, if I took away your confidence in yourself—”

“It was a bad metaphor, Liv,” he cut in. “You didn’t—you were my wings. I just…wanted too much.”

A lovely, emotionally fraught character study/rumination on the scars William Lewis inflicted on Olivia.

Flotsam and Jetsam by

adrianna_m_scovill (Olivia Benson/Rafael Barba, Mature)

“Rafi, you disclose every time you get your dick sucked?”

He drew a sharp breath and looked toward her father; he was ten yards away, talking to the captain who would be piloting Palmer’s private, and impressive, yacht. “I’d like to keep what little career I have left,” Barba muttered

“I don’t know what that means. But you were a lot more fun in the bar. I’ll get you a scotch.”

“Listen, maybe we should—” He broke off at the sound of voices behind him and started to turn.

“Roger, it’s about time, we were just about to leave without you,” Palmer said.

“Right, sorry. This is Max Dennison who I told you about.”

“Of course, Mr. Dennison.”

“Please, call me Max. This is—”

Liv, Barba thought as their gazes met.

“—Olivia.”

This story is completely ridiculous, bordering on absurd, and yet I loved every word of it. This author is really good at taking ridiculous, crack-y premises and managing to spin entertaining and entirely plausible stories out of them. Poor Barba really has a rough go of it in this one.

ineffable by

meriwethersays (Michael Burnham/Mirror Gabriel Lorca, Mirror Michael Burnham/Mirror Gabriel Lorca, minor Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler | Voq, Explicit)

It only takes a moment to see that the person in front of him, wearing Michael Burnham's face, is not the Michael he knows. His Michael was--unrestrained, splashy, trailing destruction, flush with the confidence of being the Emperor's daughter. His Michael feared nothing, cared about little, enjoyed inflicting pain even by Terran standards. Of course, his Michael is also dead.

A fascinating and engaging Discovery AU that diverges mid-S1 and presents an interesting what-if for the crew: what if Mirror Universe Lorca had stayed? So far, the story is doing a good job of showing how this scenario might have changed things for Mirror Lorca.

maybe years ago by

echidnoodle (Olivia Benson/Rafael Barba, Teen And Up Audiences)

Somewhere, deep down in a part of her she’d always been too embarrassed to acknowledge, she’d once believed that loving her was something that happened to people against their will, that in the end they were slightly worse off for it. It was an insecurity she thought she’d gotten over a long time ago, thought she’d rationalised away, thought she’d healed through years of growing up and therapy. But here it was again, only she couldn’t figure out whether Elliot’s sudden outburst had dredged up a long-dead feeling or whether she’d actually never gotten over it, and that scared her.

This story should be required reading in SVU fandom. I don't think I've read anything else that quite gets at Olivia's problems as concisely as this one. Olivia's admission about Elliot's love for her being a burden to him compared with Barba's assertion that his loving her isn't a burden knocked the wind out of me.