Title: Proof of Life
Author: mindy35
Rating: K+, blood and guts and other adult themes
Disclaimer: Characters are not my property and are used without permission or monetary gain.
Spoilers: "Shadow", mentions "Fault" and "Spooked".
Pairing(s): Elliot/Olivia, Elliot/Kathy.
Summary: Post-ep for "Shadow". Elliot is haunted by Olivia's staged death.
He woke with a start, a hot sweat brimming on his brow and desperate muscles tensed for retaliation. No one was there to blame though. No one was there to beat and bruise. No one was there to punish for the blood on her shirt and her body on the tarmac and her eyes closed in finality. All that greeted his confused vision was his own darkened bedroom. The peeling wallpaper on the wall opposite. The drawer forced shut against a bulge of faded underwear. A collection of dusty photographs on top of the pine chest. Kathy's jewellery beside them. And beside them, his keys and wallet. All the shadows gradually began to take form in the half-light.
Olivia did not exist here, not in this room.
But somewhere out there, way across town, in her cozy Manhattan residence, in her big soft bed, she did. The truth was slowly coming back to him. The details of the operation he'd been included in only as an afterthought and only because his partner spotted him sulking on the perimeter. It was her plan – hers and Ash's. But she knew damn well she wouldn't be going in without his backup. He'd seen her fitted with the vest, the one with the hidden stash of glutinous blood. He knew as well as anyone that it was all a ruse. Just as he knew that at that moment Olivia was safely asleep in her apartment. Because he'd stubbornly subverted Ashok Ramsey's offer of a ride, instead making sure that he dropped her there himself, making sure her lights blinked once before he drove on home.
Elliot's muscles softened and sagged as he swung his feet to the floor. He'd long ago mastered the skill of rising half-asleep from his bed without disturbing his wife's slumber. Padding silently to the adjoining bathroom, he switched on the light, recoiling from its unsympathetic glare. Sleepless nights were hardly a rarity for him. In fact, they were a regular part of his routine. He knew how to deal with them. He'd splash his face with cold water, blink a few times at his ragged reflection and down a drink if necessary. He'd sternly remind his brain of reality then settle back into his pillow and try to grab a few more hours of nothingness.
Usually, though, it was the zombie children that haunted him, their soulless eyes and betrayed bodies. Usually, it was not his partner, not Olivia. Shot. Dead. Limp. Gone. Robbed of him in an instant. It was not Olivia with her throat cut, her precious blood spilled, her life suddenly and cruelly extinguished. In truth, it was a possibility he lived with every day, a buried but constant stress that his soul increasingly struggled with. Because he knew that every day that possibility became more and more unbearable to him. Every day, he lived in denial, rejecting that most shattering of possibilities and forbidding his fear of it. Until, that is, death came so close that his denial collapsed before his eyes, unveiling just how close he came on a daily basis to living a life without her.
"Hey…"
He turned sharply at his wife's soft voice. She was used to his touchy reflexes though and didn't flinch. She stood on the threshold in her flannel nightie, one shoulder held higher than the other and eyes droopy with sleep.
"You okay?"
Elliot turned back to the sink, twisting the tap a little too hard. "Yeah." Water gushed into the basin and he lowered his head to throw some over his face.
"What is it?" she asked, coming no closer. "Work stuff?"
"What else?" he grunted, turning off the tap and reaching for a hand towel.
Kathy watched in the mirror as he mopped his face dry. "Something happen to Olivia?"
Elliot lowered the towel, looked at it then tossed it toward the overflowing laundry basket. "Why d'you ask?"
She watched the towel land short of the pile then bent to pick it up and place it on top. "You said her name." She straightened, observing him with a tilted head and concerned gaze. "Is she okay?"
Elliot hesitated. Kathy used to want to hear about his job, she used to want to hear about his partner. As far as he was concerned though, they'd long ago established that his horror stories ought not infect her innocent mind or disturb her oblivious sleep. He also thought that they'd already established that – as much as his wife wished different – Olivia Benson was a subject on which he preferred to remain relatively mute.
He shook his head, cleared his throat. "She's fine." He leant back on the sink, hands propped on the ledge behind him and eyes lowered to the tiling underfoot. "She just…she had to play dead. Freaked me out a bit, I guess…it's nothing, it's stupid."
It was as much as he cared to reveal – too much, in fact. He was hoping that by offering a little, he'd be released from having to complete the conversation, to track his response to its logical conclusion. Sometimes this tactic worked for him. Sometimes, not. Tonight – not. He was about to head back to bed, flicking off the harsh bathroom light and terminating the conversation, when Kathy entered the bathroom and took a seat on the closed toilet lid.
"It's not stupid," she murmured in a halting, cautious tone, "You two have been together a long time, you've been through a lot."
His head bobbed at the tiles. "Yep..."
"She's your friend, your partner. You love her and you want to keep her safe."
Elliot looked up, mouth opening on a contradiction so weak that it couldn't honestly be uttered.
Kathy met his startled gaze, a small smile curving her lips. "What, you think I don't know that you love Olivia?"
"No— I…" He withdrew from the basin, took two pensive paces to the threshold and propped an arm against the frame, all without glancing at his wife. "It's…different, it's…more complicated than…"
He had nothing and he knew he had nothing. He just hoped she didn't know it. The hard little room suddenly felt intensely claustrophobic. All he could think about was how to extract himself from the conversation he'd spent over a decade avoiding. Still – at least he wasn't thinking about the blood on Olivia's shirt.
Kathy tracked his escape attempt with her eyes. "Come on, Elliot – it's me. And it's okay. I get it." She shrugged a shoulder, waved a hand, "Or, at least, I get that I don't get it. The whole partner thing…it's unique." She paused then added in a lower voice, "Like every marriage is."
Elliot ran a hand over his head, scratching the cropped crown impatiently. "Yeah, it is, but…" He dropped his hand, dropped his head, let out a big breath. His heart thumped as he studied the tiny, no longer white tiles. He felt his entire face flush as he actually considered answering the question that had lurked behind every conversation they'd ever attempted about SVU, about his professional life, about his partnership with Olivia Benson. He looked up at her from beneath his brows, gaze dark and naked. His head shook, very slightly, very slowly. "…Nothing's ever…."
Kathy looked surprised. Not just by the content of his admission but that he'd made it. That he hadn't stonewalled her or even taken the easy route out – admitting that yes, of course he loved Olivia. As a friend or like a sister. But nothing more. She swallowed, her brow creasing slightly. "Really…? Not even while we were separated?"
Elliot shifted on the spot, adjusting his grip on the wooden doorframe. There was a short pause before Kathy went on:
"I gotta say, I'm surprised…I see the way you look at her. And I see the way she looks at you."
"And how's that?"
"I dunno, like…there's no one else in the room. Or – world."
Her tone was so casual, so accepting. There was no anger, no accusation, no judgement. And it only made him feel worse. He didn't want her understanding – he wanted her rage, her suspicion, her resentment. Better yet, he wanted her distance, her disinterest, her dismissal. That he could deal with, that he could recognize and understand. But discussing his relationship with Olivia was not something he could achieve with so level a head, so detached a heart.
For years, he'd avoided developing any kind of understanding regarding his relationship with his partner. And saying things – especially true things – would definitely lead to a greater understanding of what he felt for her. What he felt when with her, when separated from her, when thinking or dreaming of her, when placing his own solid body weight in between her and the possibility of death. Habit dictated that he not understand, that he not feel, that he not utter a word. Rather, that he avoid all three sins in the tenuous hope that, if he renounced them all, the truth they threatened to reveal wouldn't exist.
Elliot turned to leave, muttering wearily, "Well, like you said, Kath, you don't get it."
"Elliot…"
Hearing the entreaty in his wife's voice, Elliot stopped and turned back, long enough at least to beckon her back to bed. "Let's just drop it and go to sleep..." His body sagged with a second wave of relief when Kathy did not argue but followed him into the bedroom, switching off the bathroom light and leaving them in the murky early morning light.
"Are you okay?" she asked as he settled back into the years-old dint his body had made in their mattress.
"I'm fine," he replied, beating his pillow into submission with his head.
After a short silence, Kathy looked across at him and asked, quietly but more pointedly, "Are we okay?"
"Yeah…" He patted her thigh and told her to go back to sleep.
Then Elliot closed his eyes and waited until his wife's breathing evened out. When it had, he turned onto his side, putting his back to her and trying to find sleep in earnest. But no. No, it was still there. That image. Her blood. More real than it had been even in reality. His brain seemed to want to erase the part where he watched her rise from the dead, flash a smile of triumph and jog over to join him in the surveillance van. It neglected to recall the part where he felt her breath on his neck as she crouched by him in the back of the van. Or the part where she patted his shoulder to indicate he should come with her and Ash as they surprised their prey. Nor did his brain seem to remember when they all lingered outside in the hotel parking lot, wrapping up a successful sting.
For a moment, he and his partner had been left alone in the looming shadow of an ambulance. Shuffling closer, Elliot had reached out two fingers, pulling aside her windbreaker so he could peer at the ruined shirt beneath.
"I liked that shirt," he'd murmured, eyes lifting to hers.
Olivia had simply met his eyes. And smiled.
-x-
Never, not once in twelve years, had he bought anything for his partner larger than a meal. Over the years, he'd shouted her every meal that could possibly be crammed into their non-stop lifestyle – breakfast, lunch, dinner and more than one midnight snack. He'd bought her donuts, sodas, chocolate bars and countless steaming coffees. When she'd switched to a healthier diet, he'd dutifully bought her tea and fizzy water and protein bars instead. And still the occasional donut – for when she was feeling stressed or he was feeling evil. If one of them had a bad day, the other was required by the unwritten rules of partnership to buy them a beer at the end of it. It was a ritual they'd established the day they'd joined forces. And over time, it had become how they naturally expressed themselves – how they allowed their bond, their devotion, their affection to flourish unseen.
They'd also agreed in that first year of partnership that, while they considered themselves friends as well as partners, they wouldn't bother with the usual formalities when it came to birthdays and Christmases and the like. They'd forgo gifts and cakes and candles and cards. The enormity and misery of their work at Special Victims seemed to dwarf such gestures. So instead they learnt to contain whatever they felt within the seemingly safe confines of a coffee cup, delivered with a sympathetic smile or straight-faced quip. For them, small gestures became imbued with added meaning, inflated with stifled feeling. Small gestures became necessarily magnified so as to accommodate sentiments that were constantly growing and intensifying, bursting at their unyielding seams. Bursting until they had no choice but to break.
Elliot jogged up the stairs, hoping to catch his partner before she punched out. In one hand, he clutched a white bag with an elegant swirl of black writing on it. When the sales girl had verified that the purchase was a present, she'd affixed a fancy black bow to its opening as well. Elliot knew that as far as gestures went – for him and his partner, at least – this one was pretty damn enormous.
When he entered the locker room, she had her back to him, rummaging in her locker. On the low bench behind her was her bag and coat. Silently placing the white bag by her things, Elliot leant back against the locker opposite hers, arms folded across his chest. On turning around, Olivia spotted the bag first and him second. Her eyes flicked between her partner and the gift, trying but failing to form a connection that made sense to her. Elliot couldn't help a small smile.
"What's this?"
"To replace the one that got ruined."
Her eyes settled on him, squinting searchingly. "What's goin' on? What're you doin'?"
Elliot shrugged, gaze dropping to the floor. "Nothin'."
She sidled closer, head tipped to one side. "El…?"
He made a few nondescript noises, dropped his arms, stood up straight, glanced down the length of the concrete room. "Just…feelin' a bit guilty, I guess…."
Olivia shut her locker and sealed it with a flick of her wrist. "I'm the one that ditched you, what've you got to feel guilty about?"
"When Anne Gillette threatened the people I love," he said, retrieving his gaze from the end of the room and turning it back on her, "I thought of Kathy, the kids…" he stalled, wagged his head, "didn't even occur to me to think of you."
Her lips parted, her head bowed. Momentarily at a loss as to how to respond to any statement that placed their relationship and the loaded L-word in such proximity, Olivia fell silent. Elliot swiped a hand over his lips, unsure whether he wanted to prolong or obliterate the ensuing silence. His admission was daring, revealing – but not the absolute truth. When Anne Gillette had delivered her threat, he'd taken her seriously. And his first course of action had been to locate his partner. It was only on second thought that he figured her more the type to strike close to home. He was wrong. Clearly the pretty little psychopath had spent enough time in their company, observing the two of them as they escorted her about the city posing as help, for her to deduce exactly what his wife had so calmly put into words the night before.
His partner looked up, deftly side-stepping any improper implication by telling him, "Elliot, you have nothing to feel guilty about."
Voice rising with urgency, he took a step closer, as close as the little bench would allow. "She took out a hit on you, Liv, and I didn't even—" He broke off, voice lower but just as urgent as he said, "It's my job to protect you and I didn't."
"It's your job to get the bad guy," she told him evenly. "Or – in this case, girl." With a light little shrug, she reached for the white bag and broke the seal. "And we did."
"Yeah. I just…" Elliot straddled the bench and looked up at her, eyes wandering a little south of her face, "I'm havin' a hard time shaking the image of you with all that blood on your shirt."
"Fake blood," she pointed out, delving through layers of tissue paper.
He scowled, butt shifting on the bench. "I know."
"And exactly what size do you think I am?" Olivia frowned as she pulled his gift from the bag and held it up to her body. "Should I be insulted by this?"
"No. I just…" he waved at the baggy blue shirt, watched her undo a few buttons and slip it over her head, "you've got a lot of, you know, tight sort of shirts. I just thought you could use something…a little looser." Elliot paused, looking her up and down with raised eyebrows. "What, no good?"
She held her arms out at her sides, showing how the cuffs sagged well past her fingertips. "I might as well be wearing one of your shirts."
"My shirts are much cheaper."
"And yet you're the one giving me fashion advice?"
"Not advice, no, you dress fine," he replied falteringly, hands starting to gesture in vague circles at his chest area, "Sometimes…it can be a bit…distracting with the— how you—"
Olivia ripped the shirt back over her head, hair tousled and eyes wide.
"Please stop me," he begged.
"Yeah," she huffed, rolling her eyes and refolding the shirt. Although she had to concede with a touch of pink in her cheeks, "That might be the nicest thing you've almost said to me. Inappropriate. But…nice."
Elliot grimaced and attempted to snatch the gift back. "Give it here. If it's no good, I'll take it back."
But Olivia's reflexes were faster and she withdrew the shirt from his reach. "No. No…" Sliding it back in the bag, she gave him a small smile of genuine appreciation. "I'll find some use for it. Thanks."
He nodded, good mood instantly restored. "Welcome…" Then watched her gather her things and head for the door. "So you and your British buddy going out to celebrate arraignment?"
"He invited me out for a drink," she told him as he trailed her down the stairs, "but I have a prior engagement."
"S'that right?"
"Oh yeah." His partner cast a glance over her shoulder, smiling at the curious glint in his eye. "I have a long-standing date with my bed that I just can't miss."
Elliot chuckled, halting at the base of the staircase. "Sweet dreams."
"You too." Olivia lifted a hand in farewell, continuing across the squadroom and out the door, the white bag with the black bow swinging smoothly at her side.
-x-
He'd gotten three hours. Which was not a bad night's sleep for him. Replacing Olivia's punctured, blood-spattered shirt with one that would cloak her in his ever-present protection seemed to have appeased his guilty conscience somewhat. But still, he dreamt. The operation that staged her death must have opened some sort of mental floodgate because now he dreamt of her with a gun to her head on a windy airfield. He saw her throat slashed and her body plummet to the hard, filthy floor of a train station. His tortured unconscious managed to mingle and muddle the memories, making them one and the same, making them diverge from reality. So that Ryan's swift death became his partner's. So that Porter never took his precarious shot. Either way, the outcome was the same.
Olivia's blood. Her dead eyes. Her limp body. Her stopped breath.
After that, he'd given up on sleep, trudging down the stairs to pour himself a drink and distract his mind from images of pooling blood and whipping wind and irrevocable death. Now he lay on his couch in his briefs, one arm dangling off the edge and clutching the remote while his phone lay face down on his bare chest. He was tempted to call but didn't want to wake her. Olivia never put her phone on silent. So he just continued to pump the remote button with his thumb, flicking listlessly through an onslaught of bright images filtered into his dark living room via the unsleeping television. He skimmed past a black and white movie, a woman on a bed practically inhaling a phone and a man enthusiastically slicing a mound of vegetables. Then Elliot picked up his phone and looked at it.
His fingers found her number by instinct. And, without even meaning to, he pressed call.
Olivia answered on the first ring.
"Benson."
"Hey, did I wake you?"
At his hesitant opening question, her professional, on-alert tone vanished. It wasn't often that they made personal calls to each other but clearly she could tell that this was one of the rare instances that they did.
"Unfortunately not." A vague swishing accompanied her grumbling tone – a blanket maybe, being pulled up to her chin? Or her hair shifting against the linen of a pillow?
"Watcha doin' awake at…" Elliot glanced at the clock in his unlit kitchen, "3:24am?"
Olivia sighed. "Ah…lying on the couch, watching late night TV."
"Same here." He flicked through a few more channels then asked, "Is it just me or have televangelists gotten more militant over the years?"
There was a soft snort. "What channel are you on? I can't find anything but ads for phone sex."
Elliot backtracked a few channels, searching for the grainy black and white movie. "There was an old Jimmy Cagney— oh. Never mind, everyone's dead, credits are rolling."
The noise behind Olivia's voice abruptly silenced – she must have muted the television. When she spoke again her voice seemed nearer, clearer. "So what's up? Why couldn't you sleep?"
Elliot muted his television as well, tossing away the remote and staring up at the ceiling. "I haven't slept through the night since 1987, Liv."
She gave a pitiful, amused aw which turned into a yawn through which she then asked, "And what? You want me to sing you a lullaby?"
"God, no," he muttered, rubbing his eyes with one hand, "you've got worse pitch than Tutuola."
She had no defense against this accusation, not after he'd witnessed her humming along to The Bangles' Eternal Flame the other day while they were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Olivia just chuckled, a throaty, intimate sound. Elliot left his hand over his eyes, closing them and concentrating on her voice.
"Want me to tell you a bedtime story then?"
He gave a low hum, "Yeah, start with what you're wearing."
"Not that kind of bedtime story."
Now he chuckled, the uprising of air opening up something in his chest. They were flirting. Actually flirting. A little. Not terribly. Just harmlessly. If such a thing even existed for them. Maybe it didn't and maybe that's why it was another rarity for them. Something they engaged in maybe once a year and only when very drunk, very tired or very both. He loved when they did though and was always surprised at how well they did it, how easily it came to them – especially considering how infrequently they permitted themselves such lawless liberty.
Elliot glanced at the muted television screen as another indecently clad woman made love to a phone shaped like a pair of ruby red lips. "Guess I'll just have to call the number on screen..."
It was not an easy thing for them to joke about, knowing as many did not the hardship and heartbreak hidden behind the sale of sex. Maybe that was why his partner went silent on him. Or maybe she sensed that their nocturnal flirtation needed reining in. As there were no extenuating circumstances for them to blame such a display of intimacy on, Elliot followed her lead and likewise went silent.
On the other end of the phone though, Olivia was thinking about neither the grim underbelly of the phone sex industry nor the appropriateness of their repartee. Her partner's comment had made her look down at what she was in fact wearing. She hadn't planned to – it had been an impulsive decision. But coming out of the shower, freshly scrubbed and muscles loose, she'd spotted the white and black bag she'd left on the bed. And taking out the shirt he'd given her that afternoon, she'd slipped it on over her naked body. The sleeves needed to be rolled up but the tails reached comfortably to her upper thighs and the material felt smooth and comforting against her skin.
In her silent apartment, the light from the television flicking over her, Olivia ran a palm from her sternum to her belly, pressing the shirt to her warm skin. Her eyes closed and her breath began to deepen. She could feel her partner's presence on the other end of the phone, not waiting for her to speak, just – there. Like when they worked in silence at their desks, only looking up to briefly connect gazes, each taking a sip of strength from the other. Or like when they drove in silence, their minds travelling on parallel but similar tracks, one ghosting the other until they arrived at the same destination. Or like when they slept together in the crib, falling asleep to the cadence of their partner's breath, rising and falling and rising and falling, over and over again…
"…Liv?"
She'd been silent a long time, she'd started to drift.
"Hm?"
"You awake?
Her voice was suddenly scratchy. "Barely."
He paused. He smiled. "I'm hanging up. Go to bed, I'll see you tomorrow."
"Okay," she murmured, turning onto her side, her phone at her ear, "see you tomorrow…"
She didn't hang up though and Elliot was grateful. Listening to her breath was the antidote to his night terrors. Listening to her breath – transported across the city to him, every nuance delivered by some technological miracle – brought her near. It gave him exactly what he needed to find peace. It gave him proof – proof that she existed, that she continued. That slow inward pull and soft outward release was irrefutable proof of her life. And all he needed to reclaim the sleep life owed him.
He turned off the television and listened for another minute, an arm flung over his tired eyes. Then Elliot listened for one minute more. Beneath his cage of ribs, beneath layers of denial and duty, his heart seemed to jump-start itself, abruptly rebooting and beating anew. Definitive proof that he too was still alive.
Eventually, he murmured a soft goodnight, ending the call and leaving Olivia to her slumber. Minutes later, Elliot was fast asleep on the couch, his routinely snubbed heart pumping with blood and his dreams unassailed by shock, loss, death or blame.
END.