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"Such damage was done, but I made it through 'cause somebody knew I was meant for someone...So cover me up and know you're enough to use me for good."
- Jason Isbell
His ears are ringing.
The room is tilting ever so slightly and he steps back to press his left shoulder against the unmoving wall while he waits.
He waits for her.
They interviewed him first, without fanfare or introductions, and he is reminded once again of why he hates Internal Affairs. They grilled him for half an hour about every last detail he could remember. They used every trick in the book, asking the same questions over and over in a thousand different ways, trying to trip him up and see if he would change his story.
But the truth is the truth.
The IAB agents had been careful not to let them get a word in edgewise, but he caught her dark gaze and nodded reassuringly before they whisked her away from him in the corridor.
He knows it's procedure and they have never been allowed to interview together, but he wishes he was beside her now. The purposeful separation from her reminds him of his past life, when he was her partner in more than just memories. He wonders if their reputation precedes them and whether people still think they are so in-sync they can speak to each other without words.
He wonders what she thinks.
He glances around the office and doesn't see a single familiar face. Ten years of laying low and the entire damned bureau turns over.
He has half a mind to wonder where the hell Lieutenant Tucker is, though. He is sure the prick is still on the job that cost him his own.
He shakes his head at the thought and his stomach rolls.
He sees the gunman before she does.
"Liv, down!"
The shots are close range. Eight of them in rapid succession. One after another after another.
He pulls her toward him, throwing himself forward over her, on top of her. His mind is glaringly blank, save for one thought: shield, cover, protect...
Her.
He sees flashes of their life together.
She is bleeding beneath his frantic fingers on the dirty floor of a crowded bus station. There is a muzzle of a gun pressed hard to his temple and he is watching her bargain for his life when hers is the only one worth saving. He is cradling her to his chest in an airport parking lot, believing she has been shot, she has been hit, she is being taken from him.
They have cheated death so many times, he wonders fleetingly if their luck has finally run out.
Close range. Eight shots. One after another after another.
The windshield splinters and shatters. The rearview mirror crashes to the dashboard.
He holds her.
He closes his eyes and in the dark beneath his eyelids the gaping hole of the last ten years threatens to swallow him. Suddenly, his breathing becomes more ragged than before.
He has no idea.
He has no idea what she has lived through, no idea how many times she has been thrust into situations like this and he hasn't had her back.
He has no idea and he is terrified, but he has her now and he isn't letting her go.
He'll die before she does, before he ever lets anything happen to her. He'll make sure of it. He won't live without her. He won't lose her again.
"Elliot."
"Liv," he rasps her name against the back of her head. Her hair smells like coconut and spearmint gum. He can't hear himself, but he can hear her.
"El."
He tries to move, to pull back, but he realizes she has the lapel of his jacket clenched tightly in her fist. She is holding him as close to her as he has held her to him.
He lifts his head to squint through the broken glass of the windshield. The street has erupted into chaos and they should go, but he needs a moment more. He knows as soon as they step out of the car, they are back on the job. They're supposed to be superheroes, but in this moment, they are two ordinary people fighting for air after nearly losing their lives for the umpteenth time.
This isn't normal. It will never be routine and his PTSD is screaming at him, but he can't lose it. Not now.
Not when he has her so near.
He grasps her shoulders in his hands, forcing her to straighten, to sit up in her seat. The fabric of her heavy coat obscures the way he wants to see her, to look at her, to check her over. He knows he is being irrational and she hasn't been hit, but he has to see for himself.
She reaches out to him at the same moment he reaches for her face. He holds her steady for a moment and takes her in. Her left cheek is reddened from where she must've hit the center console between their seats when he forced her beneath him. He rubs his thumb over the flushed rise of her cheek.
Even when he is trying to protect her, he has hurt her.
His chest aches.
He brushes a messy wave of her hair away from her face so he look at her, so he can see her clearly.
"Are you okay?"
He isn't sure whether he has asked or she has, but their welfare has always been linked.
He can feel her shaking beneath his hands. Her grip on his arm is tightening and her short fingernails are biting into the sleeve of his jacket as though she can't hold him close enough.
He knows the feeling.
She isn't a captain in this moment. She doesn't outrank him. She is beside him and she is his partner. She is all human and hurt and pounding heart. She is his best friend and the woman he loves most in the world beneath the badge and the title and the bad-ass veneer. He can feel her precious pulse beneath his fingers, her life in his hands.
She is alive and for the first time since he left Rome he feels like he has finally done something right.
At least he has been able to save someone.
"You could've died," she chokes, as if he has just done something insane. As if they aren't partners and safeguarding her life with his own is ludicrous.
He shakes his head. She doesn't understand.
Without her, he is dead.
He has lived in the hell of exile as a dead man for the last decade without her and he won't do it again.
He searches her dark eyes. They are full and expressive and haunted and he wants to know why. He leans forward and presses his mouth to her warm forehead, kissing her there.
"You're okay," he whispers against her skin, as if his proximity will help to make it true.
It's both a promise and a prayer.
He feels her shiver beneath him and he is surprised when she reaches for him. She slips her arms around his neck and he feels her chin bump against his shoulder before she settles against him. He inhales at the same moment she exhales and the movement of their bodies makes her fall against him. He marvels at how they share even oxygen in this space.
He is holding her or maybe she is holding him. He can't be sure of anything except that they are holding each other, clutching and grasping. He isn't sure of anything except of the unrivaled peace he feels when he has her in his arms. He hasn't held her since the night Kathy died and he has thought about this feeling every moment since.
He wonders if he has bought a fast-track ticket to hell because on the night his wife drew her last breath, he found a decade worth of unexpected solace in his partner's arms.
Now that he has her close again, he doesn't want to let her go.
"You guys okay?" The police radio crackles to life somewhere near their feet. Fin's concerned voice echoes loud and clear.
Olivia jumps at the sound, but she doesn't shy away from his gaze the way he expects when she pulls back from him. She presses her hand to his knee as she bends to reach for the radio. He wants to reach for her again, to tuck her hand in his own, but the moment is over.
He watches her take a deep breath and then she is all movement and business and the boss.
She opens her car door and takes control, shouting orders to arriving officers and relaying messages through the police radio.
He meets her eyes over the roof their car when they both hear the message that IAB is on their way. He shakes his head because it's almost as if nothing has changed. Their jackets have more investigations than half the 1-6 precinct combined and in their previous life the scrutiny had been unremarkable.
It's a different world now.
They aren't on even footing. She is in charge and has to play by the book while he is still a foreigner and a rumored loose-canon.
What a pair.
He has her back no matter what, but the stakes are higher. It's no longer just their jobs on the line. It's her reputation, her squad, her legacy.
He doesn't matter. His role in the department has long been shot to hell and he would give up the tenuous foothold he has back on the job in a heartbeat if it meant preserving what she has built.
He leans up against the wall and watches her through the office window.
Her expression is impassive, but her dark eyes tell all. He wonders if the IAB agents can see through her façade or if it's just because her face is more familiar to him than his own that he knows what she is thinking.
He thinks about the last hour he has spent beside her. He thinks about what he told the agents when they asked. He told them how he wanted to get out of the car and Captain Benson had told him to stay put.
He didn't tell them about how something other than her voice held him there beside her. He felt that inexplicable pull he has never been able to explain, but it makes him believe in things like guardian angels. He thinks she might be his, because if she hadn't told him to sit tight, he would have taken a bullet to the skull and he would be lying cold and dead in the morgue.
Instead, he is here waiting for her.
He wonders if she knows she saved his life, she saves his life in every possible way.
The door opens and he snaps his gaze to her as she walks toward him. Her beautiful face is tired and troubled and he wants to ask her what the hell just happened, but she is speaking before he can open his mouth.
"What did you tell them?" She demands quietly.
"What are you talking about?" He asks, bewildered. "I told them the truth."
"Did you tell them that I told you to stay in the car when you wanted to get out?"
He nods.
"You said that I ordered you to stay in the car?" She asks, her voice rising.
"No, I did not tell them that you ordered me to stay in the car..."
She cuts him off. "But you let them believe that there was a window of opportunity for you to save Felix Tinga and I stopped you?"
He leans up against the wall to his right. He needs the stability while his world stands before him off-balance. His mind whirls. He might be exhausted and restless and a little off his game, but he isn't insane. He hasn't lost his mind. He knows what he said. He sees this for what it is.
The oldest trick in the book.
They are trying to pit them against each other.
Never gonna happen.
"I don't know what they told you in there. I don't know what you think you heard. I specifically said that if I'd gotten out of that vehicle, I'd have been a dead man and you saved my ass," he assures her.
Olivia bristles at the realization they are being played.
"And by the way, you're welcome."
She saved his life. He saved hers. He owes her a million more, but it's a chance at a start; one he is only too grateful to have.
Olivia exhales sharply into the space between them. "You're not dismissed," she says so seriously that he almost wants to laugh, but he knows better than to rile her.
"I'm standin' right here, Captain," he assures her mildly.
He will be here if she needs him.