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When Fin’s name pops up on his caller ID at 2PM on a Tuesday, Elliot’s heart rate spikes ever so slightly. He knows that Liv had been attacked the previous week – though she’d stonewalled him when he’d checked in on her as soon as Ayanna told him about it – and that the danger to her had likely not abated since then, such was the job.
He answers, “Fin. Is everything alright?”
“Yes,” he says, but he’s hedging.
“Is Liv okay?”
A heavy sigh comes over the line. “I’m worried about her,” he admits. “She’s definitely not sleeping, and I haven’t seen her eat anything other than Cliff bars in at least three days. She’s running on caffeine, mostly, and she’ll kill me for calling you, but honestly? I am not who she needs right now. Her squad is not what she needs right now. I think she needs to prove to herself that she can take care of herself - “
“Which we all know she can do,” Elliot interrupts.
“Yeah, of course she can, but she’s swung too far the other way, and I’m worried. She needs a soft place to fall.”
Elliot sighed. He couldn’t imagine that he could be what she needed. He hadn’t exactly been a pillar of reliability when it came to Olivia.He wanted desperately to be that soft place for her, but had no idea where he stood with her and was petrified of fucking things up even further.
“What do you want me to do, Fin? The second Ayanna told me she’d been attacked I checked on her to see how she was and if she needed anything, or if there was anything the OCCB could do to help, and she brushed me off. She said that she was bruised but okay, thanked me for checking in and brushed me off.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but the series of cordial texts had stung – at least until he’d had a chance to think about it. What else was she supposed to think? He hadn’t given her any real reason to believe otherwise. He hadn’t done anything to show her that she could depend on him in any real capacity, so why the hell would she reach out to him in a crisis when she’d spent the last ten years managing without him.
“Can you blame her?” Fin called him out. “Listen man, for her to trust that you’ll be there for her, you need to actually be there for her. Don’t wait for her to call you. She won’t. But I was here for the ten years you were gone, and I’m telling you that I’m worried and that she needs someone.”
“And what makes you think that person is me?”
“I know you didn’t just ask me that,” Fin grouses, and Elliot gets the distinct sense that if they were in the same room Fin might slap him. “Listen, maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but I just want her to be happy. Call her. Be there for her. She’s waited long enough.”
“I don’t - I don’t know how to do this with her, Fin,” he confesses, embarrassment rising in him, scalding hot. Being Liv’s friend used to be second-nature. He can’t believe that he’s so unsure of his footing in what used to feel like the easiest dance in the world to him.
Fin, mercifully, throws him a bone. “Show up to her apartment with food. Make sure she sleeps. And don’t let her push you away. How’s that for a start? Can you do that much?”
His therapist’s suggestion of a new beginning pops into his head, and he finds the pulse of the beat in their dance.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
*****
And so that’s how he finds himself holding a pizza outside of her apartment later that evening, making chafing small talk with the uni outside of her door, waiting for her to get home.
She doesn’t see him as she comes down the corridor, and he blanches at the sight of her.. Everything else seems to fade around him as his singular focus becomes the shiner beneath her eye. The muscles in his jaw twitch as he clenches his teeth, and knows that if he weren’t carrying a pizza box his hands would be balled into fists.
“What’re you doing here?” She demands as she approaches him, “Come to gawk at my bruises?”
That snaps him out of it. “No, of course not. I just wanted to see you. I brought food,” he says, extending the pizza out to her with the most boyish charm he can muster.
“Me too,” she says, holding up her own bag of takeout. “Guess I won’t be needing your pizza.”
She brushes past him, nods to the uni and unlocks her front door. “That’s okay. You can put it in the fridge for later. D’you still like cold pizza for breakfast?”
Olivia doesn’t answer him, but she does let him follow her into her apartment, which he counts as a win. “Fin called you, didn’t he?”
Figuring that lying would get him nowhere, and that Fin was a big boy who knew what he was getting into when he called earlier, he said “Yeah. He’s worried about you.”
He watches as she shrugs off her coat, wincing slightly as she does so. “Sweet of him,” she says drily. She heads to the kitchen and begins removing cartons of food from the bag she was carrying.
“And I wanted to see how you were doing,” he adds, hoping it might get something more from her than a short, clipped answer.
He notes the shotgun propped up against her coffee table, the rumpled throw blanket and lumpy feather pillow on her couch. The idea that she’d been unsettled enough to sleep on the couch with her shotgun within reach breaks his heart.
“Well, you’ve seen me,” she says, not even bothering to look at him. “I’m fine. You can go, if you like. I’m just going to eat, then take a shower and head to bed.”
Bullshit , Elliot thinks as he watches her move slowly around the kitchen, clearly in some pain.
“Liv,” he pleads, and that’s apparently enough for her to acquiesce that he wasn’t buying her act. She braces herself on the counter, palms flat, shoulders tight.
Without turning around to face him, she says “I’m tired and sore.”
The tension suddenly drains from her body, leaving only bone-weary fatigue behind. She turns around with shining eyes, and says, with barely controlled emotion “And I miss my son.”
“Of course,” Elliot says, knowing that he’s a poor substitute for who she really wants. “Why don’t you go sit down, and I’ll bring the food to you? We can catch up.”
She doesn’t fight him, and goes to sit on the sofa. He plates up dinner for them both, sits beside her and places a plate of food in front of her. They eat quietly after Elliot tries his hand at small talk and the conversation fizzles out without fail each time. He wants to chalk it up to her exhaustion, but he knows it’s more than that. New beginnings, he reminds himself as he clears away their plates when they’ve finished.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” she says. “Can you lock the door as you’re leaving? Thanks,” she throws over her shoulder as she goes down the hall.
No, Liv, he thinks, I’m not leaving you tonight. Tonight’s gonna be a new beginning, and he’s going to start taking care of her. He tries to keep in mind what Fin said to him earlier.
Don’t let her push you away.
Easier said than done. How to rebuff her efforts to freeze him out without imposing himself too much? Elliot wasn’t exactly known for his finesse, and this seemed like it might be outside of his meager capabilities. Looking around, he focuses on what Liv might need right now, and his eyes fall on the pizza he’d brought. He puts the pizza in the fridge, then catches sight of the pile of dishes in the sink.
This he can do. A thoughtful gesture that would take something off her plate and be one less thing she’d need to worry about once Noah came home. He sets to work washing the dishes, drying them, and putting them away. He wipes down her countertops, grabs a nearby broom and begins sweeping her floor.
“You’re still here?” she says as she comes back down the hallway barefoot, wearing sweats and a baggy t-shirt, scrunching the excess water from her hair with a towel. She opens her mouth, and it looks like she’s about to tell him off, but she stops short when she sees him holding her broom.
“Are you…cleaning?”
He shrugs. “Thought I could lessen the load a little.”
A long pause follows, then she says, quietly and sincerely, “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it, Liv,” he says, and he turns back to sweeping the modest pile of dirt he’s collected into a dustpan, then dumping it into the trash.
“You don’t have to-” she begins, but Elliot can’t let her even complete the thought.
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. It’s the least I can do,” he tells her firmly. “I just want to help you.”
“Elliot…” It sounds like she’s warning him.
Enough , he thinks. She’s not the only one who’s scared. They’re never going to get anywhere if neither of them will take the first step in being vulnerable with the other. And he’s the one who’s going to take the first step. He’s going to be the man she deserves.
“I just….I’ve fucked up, Liv, with you. I’ve taken so much from you, leaned so much on you, and you haven’t been able to trust me to do the same. I’ve neglected our relationship”
She’s listening intently, but doesn’t refute him.
“My therapist and I have been discussing the idea of new beginnings, and I want….” His heart is pounding in his chest suddenly, and he hopes these are the right words to say. That this feeling of freefall is his own insecurity, and not an actual indication of their relationship collapsing right here.
“I want a new beginning with you. If you’ll allow it.” he says, deadly serious but also terrified. “I want you to be able to trust me, and rely on me….if that’s what you want. I know I’ve got a lot to make up for, and I understand why you probably can’t trust me right now, but I wanna earn your trust back, Liv. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”
He can’t tell if he’s reaching her or not.
“I know there’s a lot we need to talk about, and I know that I don’t deserve it, but there’s nothing I want more than to show you that I’m someone you can depend on.”
“By sweeping my floors?” She says, but it’s not a no, so Elliot jumps on it.
“For a start,” he says. “I can stay the night,” he offers, and when her eyebrows practically shoot into her hairline he clarifies, “ on the couch.”
She scoffs. “That’s definitely not necessary.”
“I know,” he concedes, “but I know you haven’t been sleeping. Let me keep watch tonight.” He says, and he hopes it works.
She yawns, then sighs, and relents., though she doesn’t look happy about it. “Stay if you want, Elliot. I’m gonna go to bed,” she says, as she walks down the hallway.
Elliot settles in on her couch and allows himself to feel, even if only slightly, hope for them.
*****
A loud yelp, followed by a groan jolts him from his fitful sleep.
Immediately he’s up and running down the hall toward the sound. Another quieter groan comes through Liv’s bedroom door.
“Liv?” He calls, knocking softly on the door before opening it a crack and poking his head in.
Olivia is sitting up in bed, breathing hard, and wincing. He glances at the clock. 3:40 AM.
“You okay?”
She nods, reaches over and turns on her bedside lamp.
Tentatively, Elliot steps inside of her room and sits on the side of her bed. “Nightmares?”
She nods. “Moved too quickly and forgot to be careful of my ribs.”
“Want me to get you some water? Ibuprofen? Were you prescribed painkillers?”
“Ibuprofen,” she says, “in the cupboard above the fridge.”
He’s pouring her glass of ice water from the pitcher in the fridge when she comes out and shimmies behind him to turn on her kettle.
She takes the pills and the water from him, washes them down with a grimace.
“You’re not going to try to get more sleep?”
“She shrugs. “This is what I normally do after I’ve had a nightmare. Tea helps. I might be able to sleep again after.”
“Okay.”
When her tea brews, he follows her lead and they sit angled towards each other on opposite ends of her couch.
After a few moments of silence, with Liv clutching her mug close to her chest, he asks,
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
She shakes her head and sips her tea, and Elliot figures that that’s fine. He doesn’t usually want to talk about his nightmares either, but thought that it was worth a try. He’s happy to sit in silence with her, in any case. She wasn’t ushering him out the door, so he figured they were ahead of where they’d been only hours earlier. He’ll sit in silence for as long as she needs him to.
“Did you mean what you said earlier?” she asks a short time later.
“Yes,” he supplies. “But which part specifically?”
“About wanting a new beginning with me?” Her voice is quiet and a little tremulous, and it hurts him to hear uncertainty in her voice.
“Yes,” he says emphatically. “It’s more than I deserve, but it’s all I want.” Suddenly, it’s hard to speak through the constriction in his throat.
She nods slowly, and it feels like she believes him.
She takes a deep, bracing breath.
“I’m going to tell you something that’s going to upset you.”
Elliot sits up straighter, tries not to shiver as a chill goes down his spine. “Okay.”
“And I need you to stay as calm as you can. Whatever emotions you’re going to feel need to be processed with your therapist, or with a punching bag on your own time. Because I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with that right now, or ever, when it comes to this, okay? It’s not about you.”
“O-kay…” Elliot says, trepidation filling him with every passing second. What the hell could she possibly be talking about?
Exhaling heavily, Olivia looks down into her teacup, and tears the band-aid off. “Ten years ago I was abducted.”
She doesn’t slow down, not for a second, even though Elliot feels like time itself has stopped.
“He was one of the worst we’d ever seen. He had me for four days, and it was hell.”
Elliot’s afraid to speak as she takes a few moments to gather herself. Her words to him outside the courthouse from over a year ago now sing out to him in the silence. You have not asked me one question about what has happened to me since you left. You show up at my house in the middle of the night when my son is there asleep. That was hard for me. Scary.
“I told him about you. That you’d kill him for hurting me. Threatened to call you, even.” She smiles sardonically, and Elliot can’t speak.
“In the aftermath…the PTSD and the nightmares were really intense. I used to have this one recurring dream where I’d relive that moment. I’d threaten to call you and he’d say ‘go right ahead,’ so I would. I’d dial your number and it’d ring and ring and ring and ring….You never picked up. You never came to save me.”
The shame he feels is so intense he thinks he might die from the pain of it.
“I was so scared,” she says, her voice raspy and quiet. “He was going to kill me, and all I wanted was you.” She looks at him, then, with glassy eyes and a trembling lip and it takes everything in him not to throw himself at her feet and tell her how goddamn sorry he is. How he would’ve found her. How he would’ve killed anyone who dared touch her.
But that’s not what she needs right now, and she’d stated explicitly that she didn’t have time for his self flagellation. If he weren’t so distraught, he’d smile at her foresight. She still knows him better than anyone else ever has. He very deliberately focuses on what he’s learned over the years in his sporadic stints at therapy. Deep breath in, two, three, four, and out two, three, four.
She continues, “And for a while I hated myself for that. Because you’d been gone for two years by that point, and how could the only person I wanted in what I thought would be my last moments be someone who had no problem leaving me behind?”
“I didn’t - “ He starts, but stops himself from potentially saying the wrong thing. What could he possibly say to her? What would it matter to her that leaving her without a word had felt like excising part of his own soul when he was the one who left her behind? Instead, he asks, “Where is he now?”
“Dead.”
“Good,” he says, and he tries hard to keep it together because she’d asked him to deal with his emotions on his own time, but fuck it’s hard. He hopes she’ll want to share her journey with him someday, that he’ll be able to bear witness to her story, should she give him the privilege. “I’m so sorry, Liv.”
“It was a long time ago, and I’m doing okay,” she reassures him, sniffling. Pride swells in him. Of course she is. He’d expect nothing less from her.
She takes a few moments to collect herself, wiping tears from her cheeks.
“Did you know that Rollins got shot?” she asks. The sudden change in topic is like whiplash.
“Uh…N-no. I didn’t know. She alright?”
“Yeah. It was scary for a minute. But she made it. She was very lucky. Put some things into perspective for her. She’s teaching now, at Fordham.”
“Liv, I’m sorry,” It’s the second time he’s said those words in the course of a couple of minutes, but it’s only the beginning of the litany of things he needs to apologize for. This is as good a place to start as any.
“It’s fine,” Liv dismisses, waving her hand. “She’s happy.”
“I’m glad,” he says, and means it. “Are you okay?” He could only imagine how difficult it was to almost lose one of the detectives under her command, let alone someone who was also a very close friend.
She shrugs her shoulders. “I’m happy that she’s happy, but I miss her.”
Tears gather in her eyes again. “I’m telling you this because Amanda told me that when she was facing down the barrel of a gun all she could think about was her girls and Carisi and how she was terrified she’d never see them again.” Her voice trembles, but she pushes through. “And when I saw the glint of that machete above me…” She shakes her head.
“Liv…” He chokes.
“Obviously, I was thinking about my son. About the idea that he might witness my murder and about how I did not want to die.” Deep breaths, a small sob. “But for a fraction of a second I thought of you. About how I’d been too scared to…”
If he speaks, he’ll sob, so he stays quiet and patient, waiting for her to finish, but she doesn’t pick up where she left off.
“ Before she left, Amanda, in her newlywed bliss, asked me essentially when you and I were gonna let ourselves be happy with each other.”
Elliot’s stomach flips into his throat.
“And I told her that I’m not over the fact that you left me. And that the possibilities - ”
She gives him a pointed look.
“- are paralyzing now.”
She puts her tea on the coffee table in front of them, and when she draws back her hands are shaking.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think since the attack, and there are four things that are simultaneously true that I’m having trouble reconciling.”
Her eyes lock onto his. She is steadfast and vulnerable at once and he’s so in love with her. He nods to show her he’s listening, that she has his full attention, that he wants desperately to know whatever truths she will give him.
“One is that I am not over the fact that you left me for ten years.”
He nods to encourage her, but he can’t deny that it stings.
“Two is that I deserve to be happy.”
Her voice tightens and a tear trails down her cheek.
“Three is that no matter how much I’ve fought it, no matter how much I didn’t want it, no matter how much pain it has caused me, and no matter how much time or distance exists between us, I haven’t been able to stop loving you.”
She looks at him with a sad, resigned smile, and he feels his own tears begin to trickle down his cheeks. Her admission takes the wind out of him. It is the one thing he’d always hoped to hear, and it’s more heartening than he could have imagined to know that she had struggled with her feelings as much as he had struggled with his. Because even an ocean away, she’d been with him in ways she shouldn’t have been, and he’d made no move to do anything about it. He’d resigned himself to the specter of Olivia that had followed him from the moment he left her. She had never been far from his thoughts.
“And fourth,” she says,”is that I want to try to figure this out with you.”
He can’t help the smile that spreads across his face as he wipes his eyes.
“So you can see why I’m having a hard time with this?”
Elliot exhales a laugh. “‘Course.”
Then, tentatively, he extends his hand to her, palm up. She reaches out and puts her hand in his.
He scoots closer to her on the couch. Bringing their joined hands to his lips, he kisses her knuckles sweetly.
“Whenever you’re ready, Liv,” he whispers. “Whatever you need, whenever you’re ready.”
Before he knows what’s hit him, she’s shifting to her knees and throwing herself into his arms. Her cheek is warm against his own, her arms are tight around his shoulders. He doesn’t hesitate to encircle her waist and pull her tight to him. He can feel her heart racing beneath her T-shirt, and takes comfort in knowing that she can probably feel his galloping heart, too.
They don’t say anything; The silence is enough. They hold each other for several moments, until their hearts stop racing, and their breathing synchronizes into even, deep breaths.
Their beautiful silence is broken when Olivia can’t stifle a gigantic yawn.
“Think you can sleep?” He asks, pulling back from their embrace to palm her cheek, swiping his thumb over the bruise beneath her eye. “You’ve still got a couple of hours before your alarm. There’ll be time in the morning.”
“Yeah,” she says, turning her face briefly into his palm.
“You go ahead,” he says, “I’ll get your mug.” He stands and grabs her mug, turning away from her.
“Wait,” she says, reaching out and grabbing his arm.
He turns back to her. She’s scrutinizing him intensely. He sees the internal debate in her eyes, and also knows the instant she’s made a decision.
She tugs on his arm and when he leans down she gently fists the collar of his shirt and guides his face to hers, tilting her face up to place her lips gently on his.
It’s not the hot, explosive kiss he’d often imagined their first kiss would be. Instead, it’s a soft, sweet promise. It leaves him breathless just the same.
She pulls away, but only slightly, letting their foreheads rest together.
“When this case is over, we’ll talk, okay? We’ll figure it out.” ‘
“Okay,” he whispers. Could it really have been that simple this whole time? “We’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe go to therapy together?” She quips, but she’s only half joking. She lets go of his shirt and stands beside him, grabbing his hand again, intertwining their fingers.
“Whatever you need, Liv, I’ll do it.”
She nods. “Good. ‘Cause I think this’ll be it. There won’t be anyone else for me.”
Elation rushes through him. “For as long as you’ll have me.” I love you .
“Good,” she says. She lets go of his hand and yawns again. She moves slowly towards the hallway as he goes to put her mug in the sink. “Maybe you can come with me to get Noah from Woodstock, when the time comes?”
“I’d love nothing more,” he beams.
She nods, and it’s decided.
“See you in a couple of hours?”
“I’ll be here,” he says. For the rest of my life. For the rest of our lives.
“‘Kay,” she says with a shy smile.
The door clicks shut behind her.
Elliot can’t stop smiling as he begins to rinse the mug she’d been drinking from.
New beginnings, indeed.