Chapter Text
The disappointment and frustration that instantly coursed through Olivia as her cell phone rang was short lived when she saw Elliot’s name on the screen. “Hey,” she smiled, settling further into the couch cushion, her legs curled beneath her.
“Hi. Are you home?”
His voice was clipped, short, and it made her worried. “I am. Is everything okay?”
“Can…” he sighed. “Can I come over? I’m ten minutes away.”
Okay, now she was definitely worried. She dropped her feet to the floor and looked over to the clock above the TV displaying 9.30pm. “Of course. What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m there.”
“Okay. Come straight up.”
“Thanks, Liv.”
He rung off and Olivia called down to Jorge that Elliot was on his way. She quickly scurried around the apartment, putting a few of Noah’s books in a pile rather than scattered over the table, and checking her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She had yoga pants and an over-large sweater on, her hair up in a claw clip, her face free from the day’s make-up. She contemplated putting mascara back on at the very least but decided it was after nine so he should set his expectations as thus.
His knock was light on the door, but his steps were heavy as he passed her into the living room, his face pinched and body practically vibrating with tension. “Noah’s asleep,” she warned as she closed the door. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
He was pacing, dragging a hand over his head, down his face, clenching it as his side as he passed the coffee table and turned to her, “She’s pregnant.”
A punch to the gut Olivia had had once before stole the breath from her. Almost instantly she wanted to double over, to drag air into her lungs, to maybe puke. Her whole body reacted immediately, coursing through shock, anger, humiliation, sadness, and back around to shock.
He got someone pregnant? Again? What, five wasn’t enough?
And who was he even sleeping with? When he’d all but told her he loved her? When she was doggedly working to allow herself to love him back?
Through the shock, the anger, humiliation and sadness, it was anger that was winning out, until Elliot clarified, “Eli’s girlfriend. Rachel’s pregnant.”
The nauseating cold wash of relief flowed from her hair to her toes and, again, she wanted to double over to drag that breath into her chest. Eli? “El…”
Elliot turned to her, finally. She was still standing in the front vestibule near the door, Elliot was on the other side of the room but even with the distance she could see the sheer despair on his face. His eyes were rimmed red, his jaw chewing together and his hands were tightly curled into fists; he looked lost, defeated, scared, as he had when Eli was being held in a Jersey interview room then a Jersey psych ward.
Olivia swallowed and walked past him to her kitchen, Elliot following as she took the bourbon from the top cupboard, two glasses from the one below and laid them out on the kitchen island. She poured him a measure which he shot back immediately, then poured him another and one for herself. “I don’t know what to say, Elliot…”
“He’s nineteen. I know I was young, but he’s… he’s young .”
“He’s probably just as young as you were. And just as shit scared.” She leant a hip against the counter, one arm folding around her waist as she took a sip, “How is he?”
Elliot knocked back another mouthful and leaned his back against the island, “He’s panicking. Partly for himself, partly for how I’d react.”
“How did you react?”
“...Probably not as well as I could’ve.”
Olivia winced, thinking of the scared young man who was probably even more scared now. “El…”
“He was going to do so much! He had so much ahead of him, Liv. He-”
“-he still has that. He still has everything ahead of him.”
“Yeah, he has diapers and 3am feeds and dropping out of college for night school.” He gulped down the rest of his bourbon and poured himself another, slightly larger this time. She understood his bitterness, his fear: hell, the thought of Noah in four years being the age when Elliot welcomed Maureen was too much to think about. But she knew she had to talk Elliot through to the other side of this.
“It’s different now, Elliot. There’s programmes in the colleges, there’s campus creches and… it’s not the same story as when it was you and Kathy.”
He scoffed, “It’s still a baby. A lifetime commitment when he’s barely an adult himself.”
“He’s had plenty of adult experiences. More than most for his age. How is- did you say her name was Rachel?”
Elliot shook his head, remembering her wide panicked eyes on the video call, her hand clutched tightly in Eli’s as he did most of the talking. “She’s…”
Olivia sighed and reached out her hand, squeezing her fingers around Elliot’s arm.
“I wish Kathy was here.”
Olivia’s chest tightened, “I know… What would she have said?”
“She was so excited for Mo to have the boys… but Mo was thirty-two, not nineteen. Mo was married, not in college. I’ve let her down.”
“Kathy?”
“I was supposed to protect him after she died, and look what’s happened? He’s been a murder suspect, he’s been on a psych hold, he nearly-... And now he’s gonna be a teenage dad.”
“Like father, like son.”
His eyes snapped to her.
“ I mean , you were a teenage dad, practically twice over, and you didn’t turn out so bad.” His ire softened back to the disappointment as the deja vu swirled within her of when Elliot had given her the same perspective about her own parents. “You’ve also, if memory serves, been a murder suspect and had a fair few psych assessments.”
His shoulders jerked with a humourless laugh, taking a gulp of bourbon. He sighed when he cupped the glass back between both hands, “He’s not ready.”
“Were you?”
“Some days I still don’t feel ready and it’s been forty years.”
“Exactly.”
“Would you adopt it? The baby?”
“… what?”
His eyes widened, either because he’d just heard the words leave his mouth or because he was expecting a different reaction on her face, “I just thought-”
“-because I adopted one baby, what’s one more?”
“No, that’s not-”
She grabbed the neck of the bourbon bottle in her fist, anger flashing in her dark eyes as she stalked past him and back to the living room, berating him as she went and he followed. “-That’s exactly what you thought. I adopted Noah because he needed a family and I had love to give. Eli’s child has two parents to love it, at least three aunts and an uncle. And you. Their baby doesn’t need to be adopted unless that is what Eli and Rachel choose to do. And I can’t believe you just asked me that.
“I’m sorry, I- fuck!” Elliot flopped down on the couch next to her, his eyes closing and head dropping back to the cushion, a hand coming up to cover his face. He took a few beats, a few breaths to calm himself before he looked at her, "I'm sorry."
"You're forgiven."
"I have no idea what to do."
"It's not really up to you, El. They're nineteen. You just have to be there to support them. And to probably pay for a lot of stuff and babysit." He snorted at that. Olivia sipped her drink and curled her legs beneath her, facing him as she asked, "What would you have done differently? Back then?"
"For one, condoms."
A grin grew on Olivia's mouth as she took another drink.
"But then I wouldn't have had what I had. I don't regret anything that happened."
Her grin disappeared in degrees, placing the tumbler on her thigh and looking down at the swirling liquid, trying to not insert herself into the statement. While she wouldn't begrudge him his beautiful kids nor sometimes happy marriage, they were talking in hypotheticals and his (Kathy's) letter came to mind; his sole addendum of ' but in a parallel universe it will always be you and I'.
Despite what the pendant gift around her neck suggested, did he mean that? Truly? If they were talking in wild hypotheticals to change the course of his life, a life he was allegedly keen to share with her, would she not have had a mention then?
His long fingers were turning his glass on his belly, so reclined on the sofa that his knees practically touched the coffee table. "I can hear you thinking."
The corner of her lips tipped up, "That would be dangerous for a lot of people if that were true."
"You don't think I've thought of the 'sliding doors' moments of my life? To get me to you before Kathy? Or at least before Maureen? Liv, without my life going as it had, I haven't found a way of us finding each other. Have you?"
A college party - her at Siena, him studying architecture somewhere.
A police event - her still in uniform, him supporting his cop dad.
A bar, a gym, a shooting range, maybe he designed her damn building, who knew! There were options! He and Kathy were fucking divorced for a while, maybe then?!
But… without him having had the life he'd had, would he still be the Elliot she knew? Without the five kids, would he be as patient and compassionate? Without Kathy, would he be as passionate and loving? Olivia loved who Elliot became because of all of those experiences, all those people in his life. She loved him.
"No," she told him. "Because you wouldn't be you now if I'd known the you then."
Elliot blinked, "...I've had too much bourbon to make sense of that."
The slow smile came back to her lips, "I don't think I've had enough."
"I would change everything, Liv, but I wouldn't change a thing."
She felt the prickle of tears in her eyes. She stared back down at her bourbon, taking a good gulp to quell her emotions as Elliot shuffled along the couch closer to her. His head remained on the back of the cushion, looking up at her, "Liv, look at me."
It took her a beat before she did. He was within touching distance; she could so easily smooth her hand up his cheek, feel the day's stubble under her palm. His eyes were so close, she could see as they flicked down to her mouth while his tongue sneaked out to lick his lips. She could see the flecks of grey within the blue; within more shades of blue than she had ever really been allowed to notice.
"Liv…" her name was barely above a whisper, barely more than a shape of his lips and movement of his tongue. It was stupid to think that one word, one syllable, could hold so much promise and yearning, so much history and future. But it did. And it was the future part that worried her.
What if it didn't work out?
She wanted to ask him again, her heart was hammering just as much from that uncertainty as it was from the want within her to close her lips around his.
"It'll work out," he whispered the next time, his hand seeking out her leg. "Liv, it'll work out. This is our time. Me and you."
His fingers squeezed around her knee again and, as she leant forward, she whispered against his lips, " You and I. "
He tasted of bourbon (or was that her?). His cheek was scratchy under her hand as he surged up into the kiss, his glass transferring hands so he could cup her neck, could hold her close, could kiss her like he'd hated himself for imagining for twenty years and change.
He was kissing her, they were doing this, she was trusting him and he knew right then, his lips on hers, that he'd never break that trust again. He'd never break her again. He'd fight everyday to be that 'single most important person' in her life; Second only and happily to Noah.
Her hand smoothed down to his chest and pushed slightly, "El, we can't."
The lack of conviction in her voice gave him hope, "Why not?"
"Well, for one this is a new couch and I don't want bourbon all over it…"
He grinned at her smile, taking her tumbler and placing the two of them on the table. "What's two?"
"Noah," she said, her head jerking towards the kitchen and their bedroom doors. "And he's number one."
"He's not a sound sleeper?"
He was, but she'd never tested it on a male visitor since Ed and she wasn't about to start now. "I'm not prepared to find out," she smiled.
Elliot nodded, a sparkle to eyes that she matched with a smirk. He collapsed back to his seat but it felt, to him, like he floated down. He entwined his hand with hers, watching his fingers writhing with hers and her allowing it - was that something he would ever get over?
"Can I ask you something?" Olivia asked, trepidation in her voice as she took back her hand to pass him back his drink, grab hers and then settle down against him, her head tucking beneath his chin.
He grunted allowance around a sip of bourbon, slipping his arm around her shoulder. He laid a kiss into her hair because he could, trailed his fingers down her arm because he could.
"When… when you asked me to adopt the baby…"
"Liv…"
"Were you thinking about you raising the baby with me?"
He blew out a breath, "I'd be lying if I said it had never crossed my mind."
She chewed her lips together, her head lightly nodding against his chest, her voice quiet, "Mine too."
"But not E-..." the words stuck in his throat and she saw his hand tighten around the glass. "Eli's baby. Jesus."
"Eli's baby Jesus?"
" Funny ."
"What are you going to do?"
He sighed again, resting his lips in her hair and inhaling. "Fly out there. Tomorrow. If Ayanna will let me. Gotta meet my new daughter-in-law."
Olivia's eyebrows furrowed in a question. She sat up so she could see his face, "Are you expecting them to get married?"
"I… No. I guess not."
She placed her hand over his chest, "It might not be easy, El, but it's going to be okay."
His lips twitched.
"What?"
"Nothing, just… that's us. It might not be easy, but it's going to be great."
She bit her cheek, a blush colouring her cheeks, "I said 'okay'."
He shrugged, "I'm optimistic."
"Since when?"
He cupped his hand behind her neck and pulled her back to his lips for a kiss that grew, a kiss that made that promise of the greatness to come.
Her hand on his chest slipped lower to his abs, feeling the valleys beneath her fingers, feeling his quickened breathing and tensed muscles, feeling every urge to slide a leg over his thighs and straddle him.
It was Elliot that stopped it the second time, a pained, syllabic name breathed against her lips. And then Noah's, with maybe a question; Maybe a confirmation of her earlier halt to proceedings.
She nodded and pulled back, a flush rising up her neck. "We need to not do that."
"We need to do that more."
She chuckled, "After you get back from Colorado."
He smiled and that floaty feeling was back in him, maybe it was the bourbon but he thought it was more likely the woman staring down at him. "I should go."
She didn't want him to; Really didn't want him to. But it was definitely wise for him to, so she told him, "Uber," knowing half a bottle of Kentucky was in him.
"Yes, Captain."
She rolled her eyes and tugged him to his feet, keeping hold of his hand as she led him to the door. "Hey," she opened the door and turned to him, "I never said congratulations. New grandchild. Lucky kid."
His eyebrows rose but a smile curved his lips, a huff of breath leaving his nose. "Yeah."
"Tell Eli congratulations."
"I will."
"And call me."
"Oh, I will," the curve of his lips became a lascivious grin and he took hold of her hips, pulling her in close and kissing her in the open doorway.