Chapter Text
A/N: Writing in pieces seems to be working for me right now, so here's part 1. This takes place after Fin and Amaro bring Liv home in Beast's Obsession. All this talk about a probable Lewis convo made me want to take a swing at one of these.
Deep breaths.
Deep, slow, breaths.
One minute at a time. Just get through the next two minutes. Ten minutes. Thirty minutes.
That’s the only way she’s getting through this night, in increments. The only way she’s not going to completely lose her shit, is if she breaks this night into tiny pieces of time.
The first thing she does after they leave, is barricade herself in the bathroom with her backup weapon to take a shower. Her skin prickles under the hot water, nerve endings warning her that it’s too hot, but she needs it, needs to get him off of her.
This had helped the last time, hadn’t it?
The last time…fuck. Fuck this. Fuck everything.
She scrubs, and scrubs, with her loofah and then her hands, choking back the tears that seem to be welling out of her in a continuous stream. When her skin is flushed and pink, she forces herself to stop, forces herself out of the shower and back out into her apartment. She wraps herself in the softest clothes she owns, sweatpants and a worn long-sleeved shirt.
Against her better judgement, she also digs into the back of her closet for a familiar gray hoodie; it’s a slippery slope, keeping warm in this particular hoodie, but she’s in pieces and she just wants it. In these raw moments, still, she wants Elliot, any piece of him, and she doesn’t have the energy to be mad at herself, or to fight it. She zips it up and hugs it around herself, fighting the rush of nostalgia, grasping for comfort instead. When it doesn’t come, she drags herself back out to the couch and sinks down, lights on, gun on the coffee table.
Lewis is gone.
Dead.
Rationally, she knows this. But she’s done this before, and she knows her body just doesn’t feel safe…not yet. It’s not a process that can be rushed, she has to come down, she has to give it time, and it’s all so goddamn exhausting. So, she sets herself up on the couch, the way she needs to, and tries to close her eyes; she tries not to think of him, tries not to let herself go back there again. Her brain fights her—flashes of his breath on her face, his hands on her breasts, his blood on her skin—and then one of her scars is burning—
Deep breaths.
Shaking, she’s suddenly in triage mode, and this night is either going to slip into a bottle of wine, or—
She gets up off the couch before she can talk herself out of it, and nearly runs back into the bathroom, throws open the little cabinet she keeps there for storage.
There, buried in the back, is a bottle of cologne. She’d bought it last time, during a week of cyclical panic attacks, when nothing else was helping; it’s his, of course. It hadn’t been hard to find, he’s a simple guy, predictable and consistent with his toiletries. She must have watched him spritz it on himself a hundred times—two hundred, maybe; she’d even bought him some, once or twice, for a birthday, or Christmas, when she noticed the bottle in his locker getting low. Always the same brand, warm and woodsy, with just a little bit of spice on the finish.
During this particularly horrific week, her therapist had suggested grounding in something tangible when the panic was overwhelming, something that stimulated one of her five senses. She’d tried touch (squeezing a comb), and taste (Altoids), before ultimately dulling the panic with glass upon glass of wine, and that had scared her. It scared her enough that the next day, she’d sought after the only thing she’d wanted, the only thing she could think of that might help.
Now, she peels the gray hoodie off and wafts a couple spritzes of cologne onto it, concentrating it near the top, where the hood is. She puts the bottle back in its hiding spot, and zips herself back into the sweatshirt, walks back out to the couch and sinks down onto it. Burying her nose in the fabric she takes a long, deep inhale, and closes her eyes; she imagines she’s just stolen it back from his locker, and lets his scent wrap around her.
Deep breaths.
Over and over, she breathes him in, feels her heart rate slow as she drifts away on different memories, memories that make her feel calmer, and safer. Eventually, she falls into a deep kind of exhaustion, tired enough that it feels like she can’t move, she can only float, and think.
She thinks of Elliot.
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. She’s tried not to—god, she’s tried not to. She’s tried to let him go completely. But, as Lindstrom likes to remind her, there are things coded and stored deep within our brains through no conscious act of our own. Elliot is permanently stamped onto her psyche in the same way that William Lewis is, in a way that she doesn’t have any control over. But where Lewis is branded in darkness, Elliot is etched in light; he’s the safe place she goes when there’s no way out, when she’s trapped inside her head and she needs a place to hide. There’s a room where he lives, where she’s tucked their partnership and all of her memories away for safekeeping; she can’t look at them every day, but they're there when she needs them, when she needs to go in and lock herself up tight.
Sometimes, she wonders if Lewis would have even dared—if just Elliot’s presence, his fiercely protective energy, would have been enough to make him think twice. He’d created a halo around her, so powerful that even people she’d wanted to cross it, wouldn’t.
A knock at the door startles her into sitting up, heart pounding.
“Liv, it’s me.”
Deep breath. It’s only Fin.
Grateful that he’s thought to identify himself, she takes a minute to breath, not wanting to look like she needs a chaperone. Maybe he’s brought her some food after all, which is sweet, but she still doesn’t think she can stomach anything.
“Coming,” she calls, before he panics that she’s taking too long.
Slowly, feeling tender and sensitive from the adrenaline, she eases off the couch and goes to the door, checking that it’s actually him before she opens it.
“Fin, what are you—“
Fin’s face is unreadable. “I brought him here myself, in case you wanted me to get him outta here.”
She blinks, as Elliot slowly comes into view from where he’d been leaning against the wall.
Elliot.
Is standing in her hallway.
Her brain quickly decides.
Nope.
This isn’t happening.
This is a dream. She’s still on the couch, asleep, smelling his cologne and—
“Hey, Liv.”
She blinks again, digs a nail into her palm to see if it hurts.
It does.
She digs harder.
Ouch.
She swallows, stares at him in shock. He stares right back, and it hits her square in the chest. The eye contact, it’s too much, and she looks away.
“I, uh,” she tries, shaking her head a little, “I—what are you doing here?”
He looks upset, uncomfortable, eyes soft and serious. “I’m…I came back to the city last week, and I—I wanted to see—would it be okay if I came in?”
“No,” she says immediately, breathy and shocked, staring at him again.
She’s not even sure he’s real, and he wants to come into her apartment?
He looks taken aback, shifting from one foot to the other, eyes pleading with her.
“Liv—“
Fin reaches out to delicately rest his hand on her arm, and she jumps a little, staring down at it. His hand is warm, even through her layers, and usually when she dreams about Elliot it’s just the two of them, so—
This is real.
He’s really here.
“Liv,” Fin says again, gently, tipping his head, “You want me to stay? You want me to take him with me? He was gonna come here anyway, I wanted to have your back.”
The muscle in Elliot’s jaw twitches.
“Thank you,” she says softly, sincerely, “I can, uh—I can handle it. Go. It’s late.”
“Sure?” he asks, focused.
She smiles a little—just a little—grateful for her friend. “Yeah.”
He nods, turns to Elliot, takes a step into his space. “I respect your situation, you know that. But don’t forget what we talked about.”
What they talked about…
Elliot’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t say anything, just shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.
Fin gives her one last glance, looking like he doesn’t feel great about leaving, but he does turn and head down the hallway, eventually turning the corner towards the elevator.
And then they’re alone. For the first time in over two years.
They’re silent.
Uncomfortable.
He’s just looking at her, with those familiar, piercing blue eyes, and all of a sudden she just can’t.
“I—“ she tries, breath catching, “You gotta give me a minute. I just—“
She barely has time to see his brow crease as she quickly shuts her front door, putting her back against it and slipping down a little, bracing her palm against her forehead.
Jesus christ, what the actual fuck is happening right now…
Elliot Stabler is standing in her hallway, and she’s trying not to pass out on the other side of her front door, wearing a sweatshirt they’d shared without ever speaking about it, that smells like his cologne, because the memory of his presence is still the only thing that feels solid—
“Olivia?”
His voice comes through the door, raspy and unsure, and oh my god—
“I just need a minute,” she manages, turning to press her palms against the door, leaning her forehead there.
She takes a breath, tries to quickly decide what she wants, right now.
If given the black and white option, she wants Elliot near her, always. There had been very few times during their partnership that she hadn’t wanted him around, mostly due to the fact that deep down she wanted to be around him too much. But, she’s deeply embarrassed to still want him so much, to need him so much, after what he’s done, after he’s clearly sent the message that he doesn’t need the same from her.
Answers, are what she wants, more than anything else, she decides. She’s wanted answers for two years.
“Liv. Please?”
She’ll listen, she decides, but he doesn’t get this part of her anymore, the raw, vulnerable part. He’s lost that privilege.
She slips the chain in the door, and then slowly opens it until the chain catches, leaning against the wall with her side facing him, so that he’s only able to see part of her face. He’s quiet for a moment, and she can’t help but let her eyes roam over his face, cataloguing all the ways he’s changed, and all the ways he hasn’t.
“We can talk like this,” she offers quietly, crossing her arms, glancing at him through the gap, “So we’re not shouting. I have neighbors.”
“Whatever you want,” he offers softly, leaning against the door frame with one hand.
He has the audacity to smile; just a little, crooked one.
“You cut your hair again—“
“Elliot, what do you want?”
She’s deeply tired, and stumbling through this interaction—no matter how wanted it might be—is taking more energy than she has. His face falls, resolved, like he’d been hoping he might be able to walk back into her life as if nothing’s happened, but realized on some level that he couldn’t.
“I wanted to see you,” he says finally, quiet and honest, “I—I got back last week and I saw the news today, and I just…I wanted to see you.”
He’s so sincere it makes her angry.
He doesn’t get to do this, he doesn’t get to come here and make her feel like this, like no time has passed and he’s just coming to check on her after a rough day. It makes her eyes burn with tears of frustration, and she blinks, sniffles.
“So, if I hadn’t been in mortal danger, you wouldn’t even have let me know you were in the city?” she says bitterly, shaking her head, staring at the wall on the other side of her entryway.
“No, I—“
He stops, and she glances at him, watches him look down and rub his chin, at a loss for words. She tips her head against the wall, wanting to just…take him in, not able to stop herself. He’s bulked up a little, through his chest and shoulders, and there’s a few days of scruff on his face; she wonders if that’s typical for him now, if whatever he’s doing these days keeps him too busy to shave.
He looks up and meets her eyes, and he’s emotional.
“Fin, uh…he filled me in. On the past few months,” he rasps, eyes reddening, “Not the details, but, enough.”
A lump gathers in her throat and she rolls her eyes, looking away, more annoyed with herself for getting caught up, than she is with Fin.
“Well,” she starts, sniffling, brushing the damp hair away from her forehead, not looking at him again, “Don’t feel like you need to stick around on my account. I’m fine—“
“—Olivia,” he interrupts softly, incredulous.
Something in his tone begs her to look at him, and after a moment she does, meeting his eyes.
He looks pained, like this is killing him. “I’m sorry.”
A wave of emotion wells up inside her, all the loneliness, the incredible amount of hurt, threatening to sweep her away. She swallows around it, not able to stop a few tears from slipping down her face, thumbing them away as they fall. Crying is a slippery slope tonight; everything is right there, just under the surface, and if she falls there’s no telling how far.
“Where were you?” she asks, nearly whimpers, before she can stop herself.
A/N: More explanations and maybe a slight breakdown in part 2...thank you for reading!