DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and all characters are property of NBC and Dick Wolf. Title comes from the song 'Pills' by The Perishers.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.

We Need Lies to Make it Through the Day
By ohmanhattan

It isn't about sex. It's about release. Alex does it because she doesn't feel enough, Olivia because she feels too much. They wear the same regrets - there was always something more they could have done. One last investigation, one more precaution - everything's falling in the cracks.

But when they fuck, it all becomes fiction.

Olivia takes away Alex's control. She takes it away until Alex is Olivia's Barbie - blonde, bendy and easily manipulated.

Alex closes her eyes and tries to remember how this came to be. A single brushed hand became a kiss and a kiss became a night in Olivia's arms and how after each lost case, she'll find herself clawing at Olivia's throat and fumbling her way into Olivia's bed.

"It's late," Alex says, with the realization that her words are just filling up the silence between them, that she speaks just to affirm her existance. "I should leave." Olivia loosens her grip on Alex's thigh.

But she stays, the litany of excuses why she should always at the ready. The cab fare, the weather. 'It doesn't matter,' she tells herself.

Olivia knows their eyes betray them. The averting glances are part of their game they have to play in the day. They see how long they can go without talking to each other. To make it less noticable, to help each other forget who they were the night before.

Elliot can pretend not to notice for only so long. Alex slips up and calls Olivia 'Liv' and he's raising an eyebrow at Olivia. Olivia removes a second pair of handcuffs from the supply closet and he trains himself not to blink when Alex rubs her wrists in the courtroom the next day, unaware.

The alarm clock is a death sentence. Alex says Olivia's name to herself as she walks down the street. Once again alone. Until it becomes the last refrain of a song that she's remembered from long ago. She hates the people they must now become.

The End

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