Title: Lionhearted
Rating: T
Spoilers: general Stabler backstory
Summary: written for an improv challenge years ago. The words: lionheart, fight, you've been hiding something, winos/junkies, caress, our wish. Yeah, skipped the last one, couldn't work it in. L&O SVU, OPOV
Disclaimer: not mine, don't sue
He knows that only the lionhearted enter fights without being able to see the other side but that doesn't stop him this time. It's taken me a while to realize the difference between courage and valiancy; the first being brave and the second dutiful, but all at once it's on like a light. It's something he's been hiding for much longer than is healthy. It's why he steps over winos and will try to reason with the junkies we bring in, even though he despises them, it's why I can feel his eyes' caress but he'll never touch anyone but his wife, it's why he's yelling at me right now and exactly why I'm yelling back. His world was tipped upside down under his feet when he was eightfrikinteen by a birth and rocked a few years ago with a death, and he's more scared than anything that it will again slip from his control. So scared he'll do and say almost anything except admit it. He knows only the lionhearted enter fights without being able to see the other side, but he'd yell at me for years if it'd mean I'd always stay. I feel his eyes, so focused on me, some feeling his wife never will, and feel the rope tightening again. I realize every time he asks "Are you okay?" he's asking about the state of a character in his universe. And as he pauses for his final point in some argument I haven't been listening to I say, so quietly he has to read my lips instead of hear my words: "You are such a coward."