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It’s been a week since his son was born and Elliot hasn’t gotten much sleep. He knows that this is normal. He also knows that he has done this literally three times before, and that the twins felt like quadruplets, but Jesus. He’s getting old.
Cragen tries to help him out as much as he can, waves him home when possible, leaving John to crow loudly about preferential treatment as he’s stuck burning the midnight oil, but Elliot knows it’s just talk. All of them have shoved him out the door at a reasonable time for the past seven days, even Fin, and he’s grateful for it. He’s had dinner with his brooding teenagers and wife and newborn and he’s grateful. Exhausted, but grateful.
He wakes to a gentle shake of his arm from a familiar hand. He’s propped up against the headboard, one of the nightstand lamps warming the room with a low splash of light.
“S’the baby?” he asks, already starting to throw off covers he only managed to tug over one leg before passing out.
“No,” Kathy says around a smile, though it’s wan. He blinks hard, rubbing at his neck and leaning forward with a sort of grunt that Lizzie calls “the most Dad sound I’ve ever heard. It’s like you’re groaning, but also Chewbacca, but also dying.”
“Mm. You just saving me from myself with this neck then, honey?”
When Kathy doesn’t answer his brow furrows and he glances over. “What, I’m not funny at—” he squints at the clock past her shoulder, “2am anymore?”
Kathy’s lips twitch, but the smile falls and her face goes serious.
“Elliot, I need you to do something.”
He nods, staving off panic and trying to remain calm. (The past two years have taught him that Kathy can surprise the shit out of him without ever looking like it, and that freaking out at the first sign of trouble is only going to make things worse. Because hell, it might be as simple as “drive to Jersey to get me this particular food or I might die, no I’m serious.”)
“Sure, honey. What is it?”
She sucks her lower lip into her mouth, brows crawling together, her picture perfect anxiety face. He breathes in, out, waits for her to break the silence.
“Can you call Olivia please?”
His eyebrows search for his receding hairline. “What? Why?”
“I,” she stops, sucks in her bottom lip again, lets her tongue dart out to wet both lips, takes in a breath and says slowly, like an exhale, letting her eyes fall closed, “I want her to come over and hold me.”
The look on his face must read at least a fraction of the confusion he’s feeling because she cracks an eye at him, sighs again, and offers a quick, “Just so I can fall asleep.”
He stares at her, eyes narrowing just a touch, wondering if this is a fucked up dream he’s having and how to tell if it’s real. Does it smell like toast in here? (Or is that for a stroke?)
Possibly-Dream-Kathy’s head cants to one side, her blue eyes dropping to her hands, currently twisting the hem of her nightshirt, her wedding ring. She finally admits, “Because I kind of have a panic attack anytime I close my eyes to go to sleep.”
Elliot swallows hard, reaches a hand over and takes gentle hold of her knee, giving it a quick squeeze. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Is there some reason that me doing the holding won’t help?”
“It does,” she says, putting her hand over his. “It does, it’s how I’ve made it so far. But,” she grips his wrist tightly, “but you weren’t there when I was afraid we were gonna die,” she says, other hand subconsciously drifting to her stomach, where their child had been the past several months. We, as in Kathy and his youngest son.
He feels his jaw working, remembering that case. That stupid fucking case and he was so preoccupied he just let Liv pick up the slack for him—in his marriage—again—
“El, it’s not your fault. That’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself. Olivia took care of me. Perfect care of me, considering. Which is kind of why I feel like I need her right now.” She worries at her bottom lip again. “I know it’s weird.”
He scoffs out a laugh. “What's weird is you expect me to be able to explain this to her when I call.”
Relief floods her face, and that’s all the confirmation he needs to know that however strange it seems to him, not freaking and being willing to try has erased probably at least a month’s worth of “I forgot to call” overtime anger. Maybe two.
“Thank you.”
“Don't thank me yet,” he says, reaching for the cell on his nightstand. “You've never woken her up at 2am before. I make no promises about her agreeing to this. She might not even answer the phone.”
(But of course Olivia does, because it's a Very Olivia thing to do. And also because Liv went home that day last week and wondered where the fuck any of that came from; the "good girl" and the hand holding and the forehead leans against her neck and the constant stream of whispering she kept up in Kathy's ear that no one could hear but them, about how “I am going to get you through this. I am not going to let anything bad happen. It's going to be okay. I'm right here. I’m right here.”)
He calls. She picks up. He waits through about thirty straight seconds of cursing before attempting to explain. He tries, haltingly, sorting through six different beginnings of sentences, and finally clearing his throat and going with “Kathy needs you.” To which she just goes, “Oh. Okay. Be there soon.” Like it even makes any sense.
She shows up in sweatpants and a plain t-shirt and an NYPD hooded jacket, her badge and gun in a purse she immediately shoves into his hands to lock up safely. Follows him to his bedroom, apparently indifferent to the bemusement written all over his face. She’s still rubbing sleep out of her eyes while toeing off her sneakers and her hair is a mess and it's now 2:30am and apparently everybody wants to sleep and nobody wants to actually explain a goddamn thing.
Elliot watches them, wary and confused for about thirty seconds (until his son cries, and it's so Very Obviously his turn) as the two most important women in his life wordlessly gravitate to one another and catch each other's hands. So, he goes.
He comes back in about fifteen minutes, having changed his son and paced around the room murmuring Islanders stats despite his aching feet because of course his son can't be lulled by rocking chair movement. Of course not. The sight as he crosses the threshold almost stops him dead.
Kathy, still a little heavy and round around all her edges, propped up with the five pillows she insists were necessary to comfortably sleep the past three months, looking more peaceful than at any time in their renewed tenure as parents.
And Olivia, spooned up behind her, face half mashed into the pillow and half mashed into the mane of blonde hair at the nape of his wife's neck, steady breathing fluttering a few strands with calm regularity.
In his spot.
He blinks, for what feels like half an hour, in stunned silence. In reality it's probably more like a minute before he weakly ekes out a strangled, “Kathy,” which stirs them both, but not much. Olivia makes a game attempt at lifting her head, but Kathy only takes the hand she's got clutched in both of hers and pulls it tighter against her chest, squeezing their laced fingers.
He deciphers a mumble from one of them (realizes he can’t tell which one of them it was, and—you know what, he’s not, he’s literally not even going to try to figure out if that means anything, because it doesn’t because he’s not thinking about it) as “What is it, El?” when he approaches the bed, unsure how to broach the subject.
Considering that simple sentences are about all his sleep-deprived brain can handle at this point, he decides to be direct.
“Liv, you're in my spot.”
“I'm in your bed, and you called me. You can deal.”
The first full sentences he gets from her all night and not only are they spoken into his wife's skin, Kathy laughs at them.
After sputtering for several seconds, feeling his ears redden, he asks, “What do you suggest I do, Detective?”
“Don't make it weird,” his partner shoots back, eyes closed, right thumb rubbing over Kathy's, nestled between Kathy's breasts because that’s fine, this is all fine.
“…weird. I’m the one making it weird,” he says, in that voice he uses when he's totally making it weird.
“Yes,” hits him in stereo and he wonders what cruel twist of irony this is he’s acquired.
Because, for a long time, he used to worry that Kathy didn’t like Olivia enough. She was jealous, she was concerned, she came in second place to this person he saw every day. He learned to stop saying “Olivia said” and keep inside jokes to himself. And Olivia, he wanted her to be family, but she always hesitated. Declined dinner offers, lamely excused herself from his kids’ events, kept her distance. Itching, lonely, guarded.
He worried for a while. About Olivia, then Kathy, then both. Then he let just them counterbalance him. The last couple years had shown him just how badly shit could swing out of order without one, and then the other, and when he had neither at all, well—he needs them both. He knows he needs them both, and he’d settled for “they will tolerate each other.” It seemed reasonable enough.
He’s… not sure if this is better or worse.
But it’s ten ‘til three, Eli’s due to be fed at six, and they look damn comfortable. Elliot decides giving up—in, giving in, he doesn’t give up to anybody—sounds like a good idea. Weird can wait until morning.
Elliot kicks off his slippers, turns out the light, and climbs in on not his side (Liv doesn’t even dignify that grumble with a response). When he leans in to kiss Kathy goodnight he startles, because, Olivia’s face is right fucking there, but—he does, Kathy hums happily, and fine, maybe he is the one making it weird. But it feels wrong not to even acknowledge Liv. He can’t not.
There’s a moment when instinct leaves him halfway through the impulse to kiss her on the forehead, or the cheek, but they so rarely concede touch he can count on one hand the number of kisses like that they’ve ever exchanged (three). So instead he falls out of the hover over the two of them, punches his pillow into shape, arranges himself with a grunting sigh. Settles for reaching up and tracing her face, Olivia’s face, temple to cheek to chin, with a fingertip. He’s not sure, but he thinks he hears a noise of contentment. It’ll do.
Then his hand falls to Kathy’s hip and nudges up the edge of her shirt to palm her skin. His restless thumb bumps into Liv’s elbow jockeying for space and though he startles just a touch, they don’t. As his eyes adjust to the dim glow of street light through the curtains, he sees two silhouettes where there’s usually just one. He’s also lying on his bad shoulder, but he knows the difference between a crap night’s sleep and a good one for Kathy, and she’s already less twitchy than yesterday night.
His heart squeezes briefly with guilt for not noticing, for chalking it up to over-attentiveness to the baby, but it similarly relaxes because he could fix it. That it was something fixable, like so many things between them. Mercifully, mercifully so.
He yawns, lets his eyes close. The last thought that crosses his mind before he falls asleep is yeah, sure, this feels weird, but it doesn’t feel wrong.