A/N:This story too was published on my favorite site SVUFiction, which sadly died about a year ago. It takes place in S13. Hope you enjoy. Hope you let me know :) Thanks to PushTheButton for the avi!
Chapter 1:
Footsteps. She hears them, she dreams them, she feels them. Footsteps that follow her, taunt her, frighten her. Footsteps that once meant relief, that once meant safety and belonging. They come and go and it's been weeks that she's been hearing them. She used to dream them a while back, even when she was awake, but they never materialized into anything so the dreams stopped by themselves after a while, when her tears dried out.
She looks behind her shoulder but there's nothing there, just an empty, dark street with few passersby, so she continues on her way home.
"I'd rather walk," she said when he offered her a ride, when he implied that he wanted to come by her apartment again.
"What happened? You got cold feet?" he asked. "You know it's for real? Is that why you try to hide now?"
"No, I just…I have a long day tomorrow and I need to get home and I feel like some fresh air," she lied.
"Ok," he said and kissed her softly on her mouth. He was offended and she felt bad, because they have a good thing going. She really couldn't have asked for something better than that.
Only it's not. Because when she faces the truth, when she really allows herself to think and feel, she knows that it's not enough, that it's not it, that it's not what she spent years wanting and sometimes needing. These are not the eyes that she spent years bringing her own eyes to and reading so plainly what they said to her, this is not the smell that's embedded in her memory and in her every pore, this is not the face and the form she spent years wrongfully feeling would always be there.
And there are the footsteps, the footsteps she can sense, if not really hear. She began noticing them again shortly after she started seeing David. They weren't always present, only sometimes, and it made her self-conscious. Maybe she should have called a cab, because now she's cold despite the warm night air, now there's this chill that spreads through her veins and makes her entire body shiver, now she hears the footsteps again. The footsteps that once meant him.
Olivia looks back again, but the street is still rather empty and it's probably only her imagination that's playing with her. Maybe she should have taken her gun with her after all.
Her building is in sight and she hurries, rearranges her hair in the clip as she walks, so it won't block her view, and her own footsteps resound in the quiet street. Her hand is shaky when she reaches into her bag for the keys and she scorns herself for reacting like she was some random woman with someone following her. First of all, because no one is following her, and second of all, she'd have anyone on the ground in two seconds even if there was.
The lobby door closes behind her and she takes the stairs, because the footsteps are still there and the chill in her spine becomes warmer and it makes her stomach tremble and her knees weak. It makes her head buzz. On the third floor landing the light is scarce, one bulb is out and she slows down a bit because her breath has gotten shallow and she wants to take a deep breath, to inhale the scent that starts creeping in on her. She wants to make sure she's not wrong.
Her hand is on the railing and her lungs are filled with what reassures her heart that she wasn't wrong, and her mind realizes what the rest of her body has already come to recognize.
She can hear the soft breaths, when the footsteps slow down half a staircase away. Olivia continues the climb and her heart thumps in her chest and her blood slams in her veins and the noise is deafening, but she can still hear the footsteps.
The fourth floor landing is behind her and she enters through the door into the corridor and her pace is slow because her eyes are blurry and her throat is clogged. The light is scarce here too because it's late and the building owner sometimes leaves only one lamp on in each floor after midnight, and it's at the far end, away from her own door.
She stops short at her doorstep, and her fingers slightly tremble when they try to make the apartment key out of the rest. Her head is bowed and she tries to concentrate on the right key, but she can't because the footsteps have gotten so close that she could practically hear the rustle of movement when they stop behind her, and the saliva clicks in her throat when she feels the warm breathing at her back.
The noise of blood in her ears becomes so loud that she can't hear her own breaths, but she knows that they are shallow and fast and perhaps loud. Her whole body is frozen, only her fingers are fidgeting with the keys, and she can't hear the jingle. Her eyes draw shut when a featherlike touch brushes her arm.
The fidgeting stops and with her eyes closed she raises her head just a bit, but she stops in her tracks when the soft breaths hit her nape.
"Here, let me." She feels the words huffed against her skin and the rasp in the half whisper raises warm gooseflesh that starts at the tiny hairs at her nape and washes down her body.
She can't speak, she only manages to slightly shake her head.
The touch on her arm becomes a tangible stroke that rides up from her elbow to her shoulder and down again. Her closed eyes tighten and she bites her lower lip.
"Liv," she hears, and her name finally sounds right after months of strange mouths pronouncing it, so right that she has to fight the urge to let her head fall back and rest against the heat she feels behind her.
She shakes her head again, just once, and the touch on her right bicep becomes a grasp and her heart jumps to her throat because his lips lightly brush her nape when he whispers her name again. She swallows and raises her bowed head and the lips are still there and now they are warm against her skin and she can feel his body closer at her back, almost touching her, the heat radiating familiarly into her.
"What do you want?" she manages to say, the words come out strangled, cracked. It's not just his lips that she feels now; tilting her head up made his nose and forehead make contact with the back of her head and she opens her eyes and she knows his are closed. She feels him inhale her skin and hair as his other hand comes up and lands on her left shoulder. She stares at the 4E on her door, fighting the need to drop her eyes and look at the hands that touch her.
"What do you want?" she repeats, her voice a bit louder and less cracked, although it's still throaty. She wants him to answer but she knows his lips would move against her neck if he does and she's not sure her knees will stand that. She also knows that she should turn around and kick him the hell away, but she can't bring herself to move.
He's still quiet and she can feel him inching closer and his lips are still lightly touching her exposed nape and his face is grazing her hair that's held up by the clip. He inhales deeply and she knows what he's doing because she craves to do the same, she wants to bury her face in him and just breathe in the smell she's missed.
"Elliot," she rolls his name on her tongue in a half whisper and it's the first time she's pronounced it in months. She called him her partner, her former partner, she coined him 'something' or 'someone' when she referred to him to people that didn't know him, like David, but she hasn't said his name in so long, that it feels strange on her lips.
"Does he make you happy?" he speaks into her hairline and his fingers on her shoulder slowly advance to her shirt's neckline and when she breaths out again his knuckles softly skim the exposed nook between her shoulder and neck. Her eyes drift shut again.
He's not you, she thinks. "Yes," she says, because she's happier than she's been in months and this feels like the only thing to say that would make him go away.
He doesn't budge.
"Good," a warm, wet breath is huffed against her skin, and he's never touched her like that, never, and she has always thought that he never would, but now that he does, she's just planted there and can't bring herself to do a goddamn thing about it. She should be elbowing his crotch and sending him home doubled over, because she has no idea where and how and why he showed up and it doesn't really matter after all this time, but all she can do is just stand there and silently pray none of her neighbors would suddenly appear.
"You followed me?" she asks and she can't believe she's having a conversation with him like that.
"Sometimes, just to make sure you're ok," his voice rasps and she wants to open her eyes again but when she tries, her stomach drops a mile because she feels the kiss on her neck. She can't be mistaken, it's his lips and his tongue that she feels. She starts to turn her head because it's time to stop this but his mouth trails her neck with the movement and he lingers at the smooth skin behind her ear. The heat from his mouth and fingers washes all over her, it sends tingles down her body, she feels it in her lower belly, she feels it in the hardening of her nipples.
"You shouldn't," her voice comes out hoarse and she can't say much more but she knows he understands, he understands that he shouldn't follow her and he shouldn't be here and he shouldn't touch her like that.
"I know," he says, his lips pronounce this behind her ear, and a wet, hot, open mouthed kiss is laid on the column of her neck, and his head is dangerously close to her peripheral sight if she only opens her eyes, but she doesn't dare to. She focuses on controlling her shallow breaths and her dizziness, when another kiss trails down her neck and the keys she's held drop back into the bag and her palm comes to rest against the wooden door, to support her instead of her weakening knees.
"Then why?" she insists through the haze, and she has to swallow again because his chest makes contact with her back, and if she shifts the slightest bit, she'd be leaning against the hard, familiar solid mass behind her.
"Because I can't not do it," he mumbles and his right hand slips from her arm and grazes the side of her breast on its way to her waist, before it slides across her stomach as he holds her from behind and presses her to him. She gasps when her back is pressed flush against the solid plains of his chest and her backside connects with his pelvis.
His scent envelopes her and she breathes it in. "Elliot," she starts, her entire body is hyper alert to his.
"Let me in, Liv." He asks and commands at once and her eyes open. "Please." His voice softens and his mouth rests on her skin, and she tilts her head to the other side, as if she's adjusting her posture to fit his mouth against her neck. His left palm strokes up the side of her neck towards her cheek and she closes her eyes again.
"Elliot, please," she pleads.
He doesn't answer but his hold tightens, his left hand slides from her face to her neck and to her chest, his mouth trails the smooth flesh at the neckline of her shirt and her head lolls back by itself and rests against him. "Elliot, please," she begs, almost moans, because she can't stop him, only he can stop now.
His mouth leaves her warmth and his hand stops right above her left breast and his right hand loosens the hold on her. "Ok," he expels, "I'm sorry." And before he lets go of her completely, her eyes look down and she sees his hands on her, releasing her, and the hand that is retreating from above her left breast, from over her heart, is void of the glistening gold.
TBC