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The elevator opens on the 18th floor.
Olivia steps off, looking at the sign on the wall in front of her, displaying which direction the numbered rooms were in.
Turning right, she walks down the long corridor, passing multiple identical doors along the way. She turns a corner, and continue a short distance until she stops at her destination. She glances back at the path she just trekked, making sure there was no one behind her before her eyes fall back to the door, looking at the small plaque screwed into the wood above the peephole.
1804.
Raising her hand, she raps on the door three times firmly.
As she waits, she glances behind her at the door across the hall, knowing the occupants of that room. Members of his squad. The ones who contacted her about what happened and provided the details that has brought her to this location.
She hears the deadbolt unfastening and twists back around in time to see the door being thrown open, revealing a familiar, albeit scared face.
“Oh, Thank God!” Kathleen exclaims as she grabs Olivia’s wrist, pulling her into the room. Once the door is firmly shut behind her, she is wrapped up in the younger woman’s embrace.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Liv.” Kathleen says, squeezing Olivia tighter. Olivia’s arms come up, returning the hug, feeling the slight tremble in Kathleen’s body.
“It’s ok, Kathleen.” She comforts, bringing her hand up to stroke her blonde locks.
Pulling back out of the younger woman’s embrace, Olivia assesses the scene in front of her.
The rest of his children and his mother are scattered throughout the suite, some sitting, some standing. She spots two little kids through one of the open bedroom doors. His grandkids, she thinks. Maureen had told Olivia that she and her husband had two boys, and had shown her a couple photos while they had waited for Elliot to come home on the night of that disastrous intervention. The boys currently lie on their stomach on the bed, their chins resting upon on their small fists. They both have headphones on, thoroughly engrossed in whatever is playing on the tablet propped up on the mattress in front of them and seemingly oblivious as to why they are here.
Olivia takes a few steps further into the suite, stopping next to the chair that Bernie is currently taking residence in. Maureen is perched on the arm, holding her grandmother’s hand. “Is everyone ok?” She asks the group as her hand comes to gently rest on the elderly woman’s shoulder.
There’s a collective chorus of “yeah” and “mmm-hmm” from the people in the room.
“Do you know what happened?” She asks as she scans each face, looking for any signs of what they may or may not know, not wanting to spill the beans on anything that they hadn’t already been made aware of.
“Just that someone made a threat. Dad said it was probably nothing, but that we should all stay here as a precautionary measure.” Liz answers from her place on the couch adjacent to Bernie’s chair.
“Nothing, my foot.” Bernie chimes in. “I know my son, I saw the look on his face. Something happened.”
“Grandma…” Maureen hushes Bernie, casting a worried glance first at her youngest brother, then a silent, pleading look up at Olivia.
“Well, all I’m saying is they wouldn’t have us cooped up in here if it wasn’t serious.” Bernie responds matter-of-factly.
But Olivia’s eyes have followed where Maureen’s had strayed prior to locking onto hers, and her focus shifts to Eli, currently tucked into the corner of the couch. He’s clutching a throw pillow to his chest, and his eyes unfocused and staring in the direction of the blackened tv screen. His skin is slightly pale. It draws her concern immediately.
“I’m sure Elliot’s just being overly protective.” Olivia reassures as she gives Bernie’s shoulder a gentle pat before she removes her hand and takes several steps across the room, toward the youngest Stabler. She lowers herself to sit on the coffee table in front of his slight line, drawing him out of his thoughts. “Hey, Eli.” She greets, using a gentle, calm tone. “How ya doin? You ok?” She asks as she eyes the young boy closely. He appears stressed, anxious, reminiscent to what she’d seen in him last Christmas.
“Not great.” Eli confesses, his eyes falling to the coffee table next to her, his head shaking as he recounts his experience. “I came home from school and there were cop cars everywhere. They wouldn’t let me get close, even when I told them I lived there.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that, it must have been pretty scary for you.” Olivia acknowledges softly.
“I — I thought the worst…” Eli says. He looks up at Olivia as his eyes fill with tears. “I don’t want to lose him, too, Liv.”
Olivia feels a pang in the pit of her stomach at the boy’s words, and there’s a sudden sting of tears prickling at the back of her eyes. She swallows thickly and forces herself to tamp the swell of emotions back down, dropping her mask of professionalism back into place. She reaches a hand out, gently grasping onto one of Eli’s and prying it from the pillow he’s clutching as she speaks. “Honey, you’re not going to. If there’s one thing I know about your dad, it’s that he’s got nine lives, and he hasn’t even worked his way through half of them. He’s being very careful.”
The words taste bitter as they work their way past her lips and she inwardly cringes at her fib.
Because she does know Elliot, and she knows that he has always had a tendency to be somewhat reckless in his work. Even more so in the days, weeks and months since he’s been back in her life after a decade apart. In fact, when he was in the throes of investigating Wheatley in the weeks following Kathy’s death, she’d spent more than one night worrying about whether or not his recklessness was bordering on suicidal.
Somehow, the delivery of her words pass for convincing, because Eli seems to believe what she is saying. He inhales deeply “Ok.” He says on an exhale.
“Ok.” Olivia parrots, giving his hand one more squeeze as she nods reassuringly. Glancing up and over at Kathleen, she inquires. “Where is he?”
Kathleen points toward the closed door off the dining room area, the connecting door separating this suite from the room next door. Olivia lets go of Eli’s hand and stands. She makes her way back across the room, headed in the direction of the door, her eyes making contact with the other four Stabler children on the way, giving each one a reassuring nod.
Once she reaches her destination, she raises her hand and gently knocks, before reaching down and twisting the handle. Pushing the connecting door opened, she walks through and quietly closes the door behind her.
Whereas the other room is a full suite, complete with two separate bedrooms, a sitting area, a dining room table, and a kitchenette, the connecting room is a basic hotel room: two queen beds, bathroom, and not much more.
The lights are off, and the only illumination in the room comes from behind the drawn blinds and the blackout curtains where the beams of sunlight are straining to peek in.
He sits, unmoving, on one of the beds, facing the window. His hands rest on the mattress on either side of him, his feet planted on the floor beneath him.
She moves toward him, gently calling out his name as she steps into the space between the two beds. “Elliot.”
He startles, as though he hadn’t heard her entrance into the room, and he jumps up, prepared to fight. She jumps back in response. “Woah, easy.” She softly exclaims as her own hands come up in front of her, partly to show him that she is unarmed but also serving to defend herself if need be. “Elliot, it’s ok. It’s me.” She says.
Recognition dawns on his features, and he exhales shakily as his posture immediately relaxes, his hands dropping to his sides. “I’m sorry.” His whisper is rough, like sandpaper, as he collapses back onto the mattress. He brings one hand up to rub at his eyes as he wills his heartbeat to slow down.
“It’s ok.” She responds as she again takes a couple steps forward. Moving cautiously and slowly, she comes to sit of the other bed, facing him as his hand falls back to the mattress next to him. They say nothing, staring at one another for several long, pregnant pauses before she finally breaks the ice. “You ok?” She asks him.
He gives his head a slight shake as he looks down. “I’m...not sure.” He answers honestly. “Who called you?” He asks.
“Ayanna.” She answers. “She told me what happened.” She adds, neglecting to mention that she had verbally strong-armed the Sergeant, demanding to know his location, needing to see him once shed learned the details of what had happened. “But I want to hear it from you. Can you tell me?” She requests.
He sighs heavily before beginning. “Nova…our informant that’s infiltrated within the Marcy Killers…she told us that a hit had been ordered.” He meets her gaze. “On me….and Bell wanted a detail on me right then and there, but…” He pauses momentarily. “But Donnelly would’ve spotted that right away and he would’ve been even more suspicious, considering that on paper I’m working out of the 3-7 and not with OCCB right now. I told her to hold off…said that I could handle it.”
He brings his hands to his thighs, rubbing his palms over the denim fabric of his jeans. “Then…today, I came home.” He continues. “I had my keys out and when I saw that the front door had a chip in the paint and the lock had a dent that hadn’t been there before.” He pauses again, shaking his head as his eyes momentarily drift downward before returning to hers. “I'd been looking at my phone. I almost missed it.”
Her eyes close at that, and she shifts uncomfortably at the thought that things could be so different if he had, indeed, not been paying attention. If he hadn’t seen those minuscule details…it could’ve meant they wouldn’t be sitting here, having this conversation right now. She cannot help the slight shiver that passes through her.
But he’s lost in his recounting and doesn’t see it. “So I pulled my gun and kicked the door open. She was right there, on the other side of the door with a gun pointed at me. She actually managed to get a shot off before I was able to disarm her, but she put up a hell of a fight in the process and almost got my gun. So I had no choice but to knock her out in order to subdue her.” He finishes, hoping that she won’t press him any further.
When she says nothing, he looks up at her, seeing that she’s studying his face with an intense scrutiny. He’s seen this face before. It’s the one she uses when interrogating suspects, when she’s looking for any signs of lying or withholding information. Feeling like a bug under a microscope, he’s seconds away from squirming when she leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Show me…” She orders softly.
His eyes snap up to meet hers briefly before he realizes that she knows. Bell must’ve told her. He thinks to himself.
His hand comes up to unzip his hoodie, withdrawing his left arm from the sleeve, and then lifting the sleeve of the t-shirt he’s wearing underneath, revealing the square of white gauze dressing his shoulder.
She moves, abandoning her place on the other mattress to sit right next to him as he peels back the tape over the front of his deltoid and lifts the gauze, revealing a strip of redness, maybe a little more than an inch in length, where the assassin’s bullet had grazed him. She leans in closer as she inspects the wound as best as she can in the darkness of the room. It looks angry, but thankfully it’s superficial enough that there are only a couple of steri-strips closing it rather than actual sutures.
Her eyes remain fixed on the rough edges marring his flesh as she opens her mouth to speak. “You didn’t tell them, did you?” She asks quietly, knowingly. “Your kids? Your mom?”
He shakes his head before answering. “No. I didn’t want them to worry. Especially Eli, he was already pretty shaken up at the scene. Thankfully I was already bandaged up by the time someone told me he was there.”
Lifting her hand, she places it over his, coaxing him to lower the gauze back in place. Together they carefully rub at the edges of the white tape, adhering it back to his skin to secure the dressing.
She drops her hand to her lap as he returns the sleeve of his t-shirt over his shoulder, then feeds it back through the sleeve of his sweatshirt. As soon as he drops his hand to rest on his thigh, she covers it with her own and squeezes, just like she did last Christmas. And just like last time, he wraps his thumb around what digits her can, returning her squeeze with one of his own.
This time, though, with no console separating where they sit, she goes one step further, allowing her head to come to rest gently on his shoulder. She cranes her neck so that her lips rest against the layers of material covering the wound. Not moving, not puckering, just resting. He angles his head to rest against hers, and his lips follow her lead, resting comfortably against the skin at her hairline.
Two sets of eyes close and they stay like that for several minutes, the only sound in the quiet of the room is the slow, steady cadence of their breathing.
“Donnelly…” He says, breaking the silence. “On top of all this crap…he’s setting me up.” He confesses quietly against her brow.
Her brows knit in confusion and she lifts her head off his shoulder to look at him. “What?” She asks, not sure she heard him correctly.
He slowly nods his head as he begins explains. “The cash — the money he gave to Rosaria Santos for Sara’s ransom — the serial numbers prove it was the cash that was stolen out of a money launderer’s safe a couple weeks ago…part of our investigation into Preston Webb and the Marcy Killers.”
He sees the confusion on her face as she attempts to connect the dots and he continues in his explanation. “Donnelly and I, we were attempting to break into the safe ourselves to steal the money back for Webb, not to mention line the pockets for the Brotherhood, but it turns out someone had beaten us to the punch because the safe was practically empty when we cracked it. And while we were scratching our heads about what happened, Jet learned that a van used in the initial robbery was rented using my credit card and ID.” He pauses. “I can count on one hand the number of people outside my squad who have inner knowledge of everything. It’s gotta be him, Liv, even though he’s trying his hardest to convince me it’s not.”
“Elliot…” She says, unable to keep the trepidation out of her voice any longer, wishing he’d never gotten involved. It was bad enough to have his life threatened by the Marcy Killers, but if he’s right and Donnelly is attempting to double cross him, thats just adding another huge target to his back. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Liv…”
“No.” She interrupts. “Before you tell me you’re being careful again, please just…let me say this.”
He nods, closing his mouth to listen.
She inhales deeply before she starts. “When I got that call from Ayanna today, and she’d said you’d been shot…” She stops, shaking her head slightly, her gaze falling as she recalls the way she’d collapsed back into her chair. The way her heart had plummeted beyond her stomach and her feet, falling all those floors from her office to the street below her. How her lungs eventually began burning because she’d forgotten how to breathe.
“That…that absolutely terrified me, Elliot.” She finally pushes the words out. “Losing you once already was hard enough, and I got lucky in that you eventually came back…but...if I’m being honest, I’m not 100% confident that I could survive losing you again, especially if I knew that it was because you had died while undercover.”
His heart shatters at her words, and he can’t help but close his eyes, feeling the prickle of tears gathering behind his eyelids. He brings his right hand over to rest on top of hers as he sneaks his left one out from underneath her grasp. Once it’s free, he brings his arm up to wrap around her, ignoring the slight burn where his wound resides as he begins to pull her closer to him, angling his body slightly toward her in the process.
But it doesn’t escape her attention. “El…” She scolds softly, attempting to shrug his hand off where it has come to rest, curling around her upper arm. “Your shoulder…”
“Shhh…” He hushes as his lips come to rest against her skin once more, this time against her temple. “It’s already done.” He whispers, referring to his movement and the new position he’s assumed. She cannot help but close her eyes at the sensation. She can count on one hand the number of times that they’ve held one another like this. And every time it happens, it stirs something deep in her. A profound sense of peace and calm she feels deep down in her bones, something that she’s never experienced with anyone else before.
His head is twisted so that it now faces the wall behind the headboard, and he stares at the generic framed photo hanging above the bed as he speaks. “Liv, please trust me when I say this…” He begins, the gentle rumble of his voice vibrating against her skin. “Because I’m sure that part of you isn’t going to believe me…but I swear I am taking this seriously. I promise you, I’m going to be as careful as I can going forward, but I can’t pull back now. Not when we are so close to busting everything open with both the Marcy Killers and the Brotherhood.” He says quietly. “Donnelly’s too keen, and he’ll know something is up if I start pumping the brakes. It could open up the door to a whole new set of problems and set me up for something worse.”
She's silent against him, lost in her own thoughts for a couple minutes, before she nods in understanding against his jaw, her eyes remaining closed. “It’s like the Titanic.” She muses out loud as she opens them, looking down to where his hand rests on top of hers.
He pulls back slightly and glances down at the part in her hair, his brows knit in confusion. “I’m…not quite sure how to respond to that, Liv, you kinda lost me with that left turn.” He says with a slight shake of his head.
She smirks as her gaze remains focused on their hands, amused at his response. “There’s a theory that if the crew hadn’t tried to change course and turn to avoid the iceberg — if they’d just faced it and hit it head on — that overall the ship would’ve sustained less damage and it wouldn’t have sunk and become the disaster that it was. You’re saying that you’re at a point now where you have two options: change course and avoid, or plow through head on. Which option will cause less damage to you in the end?”
He mulls her words over while he continues to look down at her, specifically at the way her loose waves curtain around her face, preventing him from seeing it fully.
His hand lifts off hers and comes up, gently grasping her chin, holding it between his thumb and pointer finger and tilting her head up slightly. He pulls his head back just enough as he looks here squarely in the eyes. “I’m choosing the option that’s going to allow me to wrap this up quickly and safely, so that I can put Donnelly and the Brotherhood and the Marcy Killers and all of this behind me and hopefully never have to go undercover again.” He says with a tone of assurance. His fingers release her chin and his hand moves to push her hair behind her ear, his thumb ghosting across her cheekbone in the process. His fingers comb through her waves, scratching against her scalp lightly as they hook the tresses around her ear. His eyes have followed the path his hand has taken, so he doesn’t see the effect it has on her, the brief fluttering of her lashes at his touch.
Because she’s craved this kind of touch, this kind of attention from him for more years than she cares to actually admit.
He continues to speak, mesmerized by the sight of her strands slipping through the spaces between his fingers. “Because I meant what I said to you before. I still wanna talk, and know things about you, and find balance, and figure out…” He chews on his lip as he chooses his words carefully. His eyes finally shift back to hers, and she's struck at the intensity that she sees swirling within the blue orbs, the slight sheen of moisture coating them once more. “And figure out how I can begin again…with you.”
She feels a hard pang in her ribcage at that last bit, followed by a heat that courses and spreads through her entire body, causing her skin to flush. She has to look away quickly, before she does something stupid.
Like grabbing him by the neck and pulling his lips to hers.
Keeping his fingers in her hair, he draws her back to him and rest his lips against her temple once more. “Besides…” He continues, a newfound lightness laced in his tone as she feels his lips lifting against her skin. “I only just got to finally meet Noah, I gotta stick around and get to know the kid…bond with him over some rocky road.”
She can’t help but let out a laugh, thankful for the break in the tension. “Good guess, but wrong.” She says as she keeps her head down to hide her smirk, knowing what his reaction will be to her next words. “He currently loves mint chocolate chip.”
“Oh, blech...” Elliot groans out in response, not a fan of that particular flavor at all. Her smirk grows into a full-fledged grin, and he can feel the puffs of her breath against his neck as she chuckles. “Maybe it’s time to introduce him to gelato. That’ll open up a whole new world for him.” He thinks out loud.
“He’d like that.” She says before amending the words. “We’d like that.”
With those three words, she gives him hope. Hope for what the future will hold for them, and he’s suddenly reinvigorated, ready to close in and take the entire lot of these criminals (cops and gangster alike) down. His hand drifts back down to hers once more, this time tentatively hooking a couple digits between hers.
And she lets him.
They fall back into a comfortable quiet again, content to just sit in stillness with one another.
Until a faint buzzing between them breaks through the calm.
Her phone.
Regretfully she pulls back, removing her hand out from underneath his to fish the device out of her coat pocket. “I’m sorry. “She apologizes. “It’s probably Fin. I sort of bolted out of the squad room without telling him much about where I was going.” His arm falls from around her and he withdraws his other hand, returning it to his own lap.
She looks down at her screen, seeing that indeed, Fin is texting her, inquiring about where she is and if she’s ok. Unlocking the screen, she sees several previous messages that have gone unanswered.
“I should go.” She whispers as she fires off a quick reply that she’s ok and that she’ll be back soon. He nods sadly, already missing the feeling of holding her and wishing they could’ve had just one more minute before being interrupted.
He stands, taking a minute to twist his torso back and forth a couple times. The combination of his prolonged positioning in addition to his earlier adrenaline rush have him feeling a little stiff.
Right before he turns, he sees her standing, as well, shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat. He takes several steps in the direction of the connecting door when he feels it.
She grabs onto his bicep, squeezing as she pulls, turning him back around to face her (much like he has done with her in the past). Before he can process it, her hands have wound around his torso, looping and curling up underneath his armpits and grasping onto his shoulders, pulling him into her embrace as her head falls to his shoulder.
His own arms come up in response, one winding around her back, the other coming up to her head as he holds her to him.
“Please be safe.” He hears her whisper against the fabric of his hoodie, giving him one final squeeze before loosening her arms. She moves to step around him and he twists with her as she steps away, his hands maintaining contact with her for as long as possible. The last thing he feels as she leaves his personal bubble are the ends of her hair as they slip one last time through his fingers. He thinks he's becoming addicted to the sensation, because he wants nothing more right now than to follow her, pull her back to lie on the bed with him and run his hand through her silken locks over and over again.
He turns fully, facing her and watching as she opens the connecting door once more and slips through, closing it behind her without looking back. He sighs as he stares at the closed door. He can hear the muffled goodbyes that she shares with his family, followed by the telltale opening of the door to the room when he’s struck with a thought.
Rushing over to his own door, he braces both his hands on the heavy wood as he leans forward, peering through the peephole just as he hears the weighted closing of the door to the room next door.
He can barely make out her form on the edge of the rounded scope. She’s standing outside the door she’d just exited out of, and to him it looks as though she’s staring at the door to the room across the hall, no doubt aware that Cho and Maldonado reside on the other side, spying through their own peepholes, on full alert to any and all activity happening in the vicinity around the rooms.
After several seconds, she reaches back into her pocket and pulls her phone back out as she turns and begins walking, looking down as she moves with purpose, heading toward the elevator. She doesn’t cast a glance at his door, doesn’t even look up as she passes by, and his heart sinks a little. He listens to her retreating footfall until he can no longer hear any indication she’s still there.
He inhales deeply as he stands upright, letting his hands fall from the door back to his sides, saddened at the fact that this will probably be their last interaction for a while, at least until he can wrap up these cases.
Then he hears it.
A buzzing behind him.
He turns back to face the room, eyes searching for the source of the noise. His mouth opening when he’s found it.
There, on the nightstand mounted to the wall between the beds is a small black object.
A burner phone.
She’d left it there.
He rushes over and swipes it up, hitting a button on the side to illuminate the screen and seeing and alert for a new text message. A number he doesn’t recognize.
Pressing the notification, he opens the message and reads:
“There is a single number programmed into this phone. It’s for my burner. I will keep it on me at all times. Call or text me every night (or if you’re in trouble) until this is all over so I know that you are safe or if you need help.
-Me”
He grins. He’d been so focused on watching her when she left that he hadn’t realized the phone she’d pulled out as she’d walked away was not her actual phone, but rather another burner.
Smart woman. He thinks as his finger move.
He accesses the keyboard, typing in his short reply before sending it off.
I will.
I promise.