Work Text:
She knew the call would come in, was waiting for the call to come in, was counting on the call to come in.
At 10:27 that night, it finally did, and Olivia picked it up even before the first vibration of her phone had given way to the second.
“Kathy?” she asked, trying to keep her voice modulated, hiding the mixture of terror and hope that coursed through her mind.
“He’s all right, Liv,” Kathy said immediately. “Well, no change, anyway.”
Olivia released the breath she had been holding but said nothing for a long moment.
“I was wondering if you could come for a few hours,” Kathy finally said. Olivia wondered how much it cost her to make the request; though she and Kathy had grown into a sometimes-uncomfortable friendship, Olivia knew there was some resentment and jealousy from her partner’s wife, as well. “It’s just that I—”
“Of course I can come,” Olivia answered, already moving around her living room, gathering what she would need to spend the night watching over Elliot as he recovered.
“He’s been sedated,” Kathy said, “so he shouldn’t wake until morning. But if he does, I just know…since he can’t see…he’s going to want someone he trusts to be there with him. And the kids are at home, and—”
“You don’t have to explain, Kathy. I get it. It’s no problem. I’m on my way.” Spending time with Elliot after he had been so gravely injured would never be a problem; the only reason she was at home at all was because the room had felt crowded with all three of them in there…she had felt as though, partner or not, she didn’t have the right to be there.
Olivia disconnected the call and hurried down the stairs to her car. Pointing it towards Mercy Hospital felt like one of the most important things she had done in a long while.
***
He was aware when she entered the room—actually, he couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been aware of her as soon as she entered the room. He could hear them murmuring about him, his condition, his blindness. He thought they might have hugged, but he couldn’t be sure about that. He couldn’t open his eyes.
Whatever they had given him to help him rest amidst the panic of losing his sight had worked at first. He could remember drifting off as Kathy held his hand, smoothed his head, and spoke to him in that soft, reassuring voice she usually reserved for the kids when they were sick or injured.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep—unconscious, really—but he woke to no one’s hand in his and both of their voices at his bedside. He tried to open his eyes; he tried to open his mouth and say hello to his partner, or perhaps goodbye to his wife, but the signals from his brain were obviously not being carried through to action in the rest of his body.
He waited for the panic he had felt upon not being able to see. It didn’t come. Perhaps the sedatives were still keeping it down, as they were supposed to do.
The familiar scent of Kathy’s perfume, long since faded to a whisper of a memory, drifted into his consciousness just before he felt her lips on his forehead, her hand squeezing his, her soft words: “Sleep, Elliot. I love you.”
He heard the door to the ICU room, one of those glassed-in cubicles of a “private” room, softly close behind her as she left, and then it was just Olivia…just Olivia, his partner, the person he trusted most in the world to have his back. He listened as she settled herself in…the soft clatter of several objects being placed on the counter that ran along one side of the room, the scrape of the chair as she pulled it closer to his bed, her soft sigh as she finally sat to keep vigil. To keep him safe.
For a long time, she didn’t speak or move, and Elliot tried his best to slip back into sleep. He knew he needed it, and it wasn’t as though he could do anything, anyway. But for some reason, the sleep wouldn’t come.
He wasn’t surprised when he felt her hand slip into his. The feeling was all Olivia, the soft skin mixed with the hard calluses. Just her—tough in so many places but still with that core softness even he didn’t see too often. He wasn’t surprised when she squeezed harder than Kathy ever had. He wasn’t even surprised when she began to speak, though what she said would have taken his breath away if he had been capable of any kind of physical response at all.
“I was so scared today, El. Scared when I saw you go down, scared when you didn’t wake up. Scared as I held you to me that I would never see you open your eyes again.”
I know that fear. He flashed back to the moment he had seen her go down, blood seeping through her hand as she held it to her neck.
“I don’t know what to do with that fear. I don’t know how to even categorize it, this feeling.”
You don’t have to categorize everything, Liv. Some things can only be felt. For all the empathy she offered victims, for everything she seemed to intuit or understand about their emotional paths, she never seemed to give the same grace to herself, the same permission to just feel.
“You’re my partner, El. I know it’s our job to have each other’s backs, to look out for each other. But what I felt today wasn’t that. It was just knowing that I didn’t want to be a part of a world that didn’t have you in it.”
I know, Liv. I know. He heard the scraping of the chair as it moved closer to his bed, and when she leaned in and put her head on his chest, just above his heart, he had never wanted anything more than to bring his arms up and hold her to him.
“I love you,” she whispered.
Forbidden.
“So help me, Elliot, if I ever find out you heard any of this…”
I’ll never be able to tell you, Liv. I’ll never be able to tell you I heard you, just as I can never tell you so many things. He felt guilty for even thinking the words; hadn’t he chosen to go back to Kathy when Olivia was right in front of him? Hadn’t he chosen the familiar, the safe, over what he had wanted for years? Over what he never should have wanted in the first place?
He both heard and felt her sigh heavily, exhausted by the characteristic burst of bravado following a moment when she actually let him in.
I want to wrap my arms around you, Liv. Baby, I want to take all this weight off your shoulders. I want to soothe all those jagged edges that tell you that you don’t deserve happiness.
It was as if she heard him; it was as if she knew in that moment that she meant as much to him as he meant to her. He felt the front of his paper-thin hospital gown dampen just before he felt her body shudder with a sob he knew she was trying to repress, even with no one there to bear witness. After a moment, she gave up the attempt, and he knew it was only because she believed herself to be unobserved.
“El,” she said, her voice cracked with the last several minutes of shuddering sobs. “I hope you can’t hear this, I hope you’ll never even remember I was here, but—”
I’ll never forget this.
“But you have to know that you are the most…the single most important person in my life. You are the person I think of as I fall asleep, you are the person I want at my side. And I guess I’m a coward for not telling you this while you were separated, for waiting until you had gone back to your marriage. For waiting for you to be unconscious and afraid and wounded. Maybe it’s only safe to feel this way when it’s off-limits.” She chuckled in the bitter way she did when she convinced herself over and over that she could never have what she truly wanted.
No…baby, no… He once again tried to force his arms into movement, tried to embrace her, even if this was the only time he’d ever be able to do it. They stayed stubbornly motionless at his sides, and he couldn’t even twitch a finger in the hand that still held his.
“But the truth is, and will always be, that I have loved you for so long I’m not even sure if I’ll ever know how to love anyone else.”
His heart broke, and he wondered—not for the first time—if it would be better for both of them if he let her go.
I can’t. I can’t let her go. God, I just can’t.
He felt as she raised her head off his chest, and he wanted to protest the movement, wanted to tell her that’s where he wanted her to be right now, right next to his heart even if she couldn’t be in his arms. He tried to speak, but once again, he couldn’t.
She squeezed his hand in both of hers as she stood next to him, and it was a different perfume he smelled this time—stronger, more insistent—as she lowered her face to his and kissed his motionless lips. “I love you,” she said again, and then she let go of his hand and moved away.
No, please. Don’t leave.
She didn’t. Instead, he heard the scrape of the chair again, this time as she moved it slightly farther away from his bed, and her sigh as she once again settled to watch over him. Somehow, he could finally rest.
***
As he approached the precinct nearly a month later, Elliot felt unaccountably nervous. It wasn’t that he hadn’t talked to Liv as he’d recovered; they’d talked almost every day. It wasn’t even that he hadn’t seen her. But coming back to work…spending long hours with her once again…he had been looking forward to it in a way he knew he shouldn’t have. And yet, he still didn’t know how he could keep from her that he had heard her declaration, that he had—in the only way he could—confessed to her, as well.
He shook his head and strode into the precinct, riding the elevator up to the familiar SVU squad room. He watched her for a moment, bent over her desk, scribbling something into a file. As though she sensed his presence, she turned and smiled.
“Welcome back, partner,” she said.
So, this is how it’s gonna be.
“Thanks,” he said, flashing her a quick grin. “What’ve we got?”