Chapter Text
Olivia panics.
He’s not surprised, really. He’d thought that her asking him to marry her might have been an overreaction. An over-correction for the bad news that he’s going to be away for a while just when she needs him most.
It had certainly been a spur of the moment thing—he’d seen that on her face. The moment she’d looked at him and something in her eyes had shifted, brightened, heightened.
He knows she hadn’t been planning this. Hadn’t been thinking about it for a while. Doesn’t have a daughter who keeps sending tasteful rings to her email as not-so-subtle hints to hurry it up, the way he does.
So he’s not all that surprised when he comes home several long hours after she’d popped the question and finds her standing in her kitchen, methodically chewing a piece of toast because she’s nauseous from the combination of her antibiotics, and her pain pills, and the steroids.
And everything else.
He’s not surprised that she can’t quite meet his gaze when she mentions that she FaceTimed with Noah just before dinner and the McCann’s are bringing him back tomorrow night, and he follows it up by asking, “Did you tell him about the wedding?”
She swallows hard, like the toast is trying to claw its way back up her gullet and says quietly, “No.”
Then she becomes very involved in pressing her index finger against a couple of crumbs that have landed on the countertop and brushing them off onto her plate.
He can see it all over her face—the anxiety, the dread.
“Second thoughts?” he asks, because he knows her, and he knows this was a leap. A big one.
“I—“ She glances up, away, blows out a heavy breath. “It’s not that—It’s—it’s just… a lot. All at once.”
“Yeah,” he says calmly, because he’s feeling pretty zen about the whole thing; he doesn’t feel like she’s about to run. “It is. And it’s not.”
She scoffs at that, gives him a look. A look that clearly says, How is it not?
“We’ve got what—two weeks?” she asks. He’d told her when he has to report for the new gig, had told her they have a little time before he goes, that there were still logistics to be sorted first and documents to prep. Really, he’d begged a week’s reprieve because she’d just taken a dozen pellets to the hip and he doesn’t want to leave her without help, and miraculously the job had been able to accommodate them, for once.
“Just about, yeah.”
“Two weeks to figure out a day that works for your fifteen kids and for our friends and for a venue for some kind of party, at least. Two weeks to break it to the Noah—and Eli—and to figure out who’s going to move in with whom, or if we need to get a whole new place, and—“
He stops her, puts his hands on her shoulders and soothes, “Hey, hey, hey…” Rubs his thumbs over her collarbone and says, “Forget about all that for a second. Just look at me.”
She does, and he takes a minute to hold her gaze, to make sure she’s with him; and then he tells her, “You’re it for me, Liv. You’re what I want—now, next year; forever. I don’t ever wanna let this go.”
“Neither do I,” she insists, one hand rising to squeeze her fingers around his wrist, an errant toast crumb scratching against his pulse point. “It’s just… a lot, all at once.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” he tells her, tightening his grip on her shoulders when she rolls her eyes and starts to step back. “Hear me out. What if it’s just us, for now. You, me, a judge, a couple of rings. Kathleen because she’d kill me if she found out we did it without her and because Noah’s not old enough to be a witness. Nobody else even has to know. We do that, for now, just us, and the rest of it we can figure out when I get back. At whatever pace works for us.”
She eyes him warily for a second, like she’s weighing the proposal, probably thinking over all the ways it’s a bad idea.
He waits her out; he’s gotten good at that.
“You’re really going to get married and not invite the majority of your kids?” she questions, her brow pinching, her eyes narrowing.
“I’m going to file paperwork with the state of New York that says you’re the person I want to be with for the rest of my life,” he corrects. “That what’s mine is yours, and that if—God forbid—there’s any sort of emergency, I want you there beside me.” His thumbs rub back and forth against her shoulders, and then he smirks and tells her, “And then when I get back, we can update Jesus and the kids on the whole situation.”
She snorts at that, shaking her head and joking, “Won’t He already be there? ‘Where two or more are gathered’ and all that?”
He gives her that, concedes, “Technically, yes. But y’know… ‘render unto Caesar…’”
“So this is a business transaction, like your taxes,” she counters, sounding less than thrilled with the prospect, “Just you, me, and the State of New York making a deal.”
Elliot scowls, his hands sliding down from her shoulders to her hips, exceedingly careful around the one that’s still healing and tender.
“This is me wanting you to be my wife,” he tells her, his voice rough and quiet. “Right now. I don’t give a shit about the logistics, and I don’t want to wait til I get back. I want you to be mine, and me to be yours, and I want to sign my name to that. Nothing else matters—not right now. We’ll tell the kids we’re engaged; we’ll figure out everything else when I get back, have a ceremony, throw a party, decide who will live where, whatever. But you got it in my head, Liv, and now I want it—if I have to go away for a while, I want to go as your husband. Not your ex-partner-boyfriend-longterm-whatever.”
She studies his face again, for another long minute. Elliot feels the breath move in and out of her lungs, her ribs expanding and contracting beneath his palms.
“Your mom should be there,” she says, finally, relaxing just a little. “You’re going away for a while and she’s—” She doesn’t say it but they both know; his mother isn’t doing as well these days. Better, some days. But worse, a lot of them, and if they’re getting married, she ought to be there, just in case she doesn’t get the chance to be there later.
He thinks of sitting in his garden with his mother a few weeks ago, of the way she’d looked at him and told him that all she wanted was for him to be happy.
“You’re right,” he tells Olivia. “Mama should be there.” Because nothing, he thinks, would make her happier than this. “She can’t keep a secret these days, though. So she’ll probably blab.”
Olivia shakes her head and tells him, “She owes me one. I have faith in her. Besides, she loves a little intrigue.”
Elliot snorts, and nods, agrees, “She does, yeah.”
Olivia smiles up at him, and it hits him with a rush of excitement that she’s agreeing to this. That in less than two weeks, he’s going to be married to her. And that it was her idea in the first place.
He sucks in a deep breath, a grin spreading over his cheeks that he cannot suppress.
“Okay. So.” His fingers squeeze against her skin again, once. “You, me, a judge, some rings. Kathleen, Noah, and my mom. And the rest we’ll just… put a pin in for a while.”
She echoes his sharp inhale, lets her breath out in a quick rush, and then nods.
“Okay, then.” Her gaze flicks to his, anxious but excited, the corner of her mouth curling up in a wry half smile. “Let’s elope.”