A/N: Since season eighteen has been disappointing for me in too many ways to mention, I wanted to take a brief return to happier times. And what better way than an angsty one-shot with hints of Tuckson and reimagined scenarios that place our dear motherly badass in peril? Started this back when the episode aired and just picked it up again, so hopefully it's not too rough on the eyes. Happy reading!
Disclaimer: I am not in any way knowledgeable of the inner-workings of hospitals; I tried educating myself through research, but I have no doubts I am still terribly off-base. So hopefully you can imagine with me. :)
When she heard the retort of the sniper, it wasn't Joe's body jerking back in response that caused the air to rush out of her lungs. It was the blossom of pain that erupted in her back, shoving her towards the SUV.
She stumbled forward as the spike of stabbing pain dulled as quickly as the punch came, decrescendoing into a post-needle prick throbbing while the erratic, off-tempo symphony that was currently her heartbeat performed for an intimate audience of one. Everything around her and in her became numb as shock flooded her veins. The trees blurred into a myriad of browns and greens, the world around her becoming some haphazard watercolor painting her son could have easily created himself.
Amidst the disorienting haze, a sharp "Lieutenant!" almost didn't cut through the blood pulsating and roaring in her ears. The sound was all-consuming. It was reminiscent of the childhood myth of putting your ear to one of those conch shells, listening to the crashing waves of the ocean it came from. Except her paradise was not found in the middle of the street across from this brownstone. This, she concluded as her knees buckled and hit the road, this sucked.
The asphalt didn't rise to meet her as quickly as she expected. It's as if her body were playing some twisted version of tug-of-war with gravity. Before the rest of her body could seek out the cold tar, a pair of hands grabbed her sides, anchoring her. Through the vertigo-induced fog, a head ducked into view, eyes seeking her glazed ones. She blinked a few times, willing for her vision to stop swimming. The road finally stopped tilting as the hands grasping her upper arms tightened their hold to steady her.
With a slight shake of the head, she lifted her chin, finding Tucker's penetrating stare assessing her, running a calculating eye down her body before returning to linger on her face. His brow furrowed as his attention zeroed in on the bruising around her eye, and she felt it pulsate under the weight of his scrutiny. Funny; Noah probably could have painted that mess, too.
Her face grew hot upon his close examination of her, and she returned her gaze to the ground, focusing on his shoe scuffed by his less-than-graceful dropping in front of her.
Reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, he rasped out, "It's over. You did good, Lieutenant."
Nodding, Olivia attempted to push up onto her feet, and Tucker placed his hands under her armpits to help hoist her up. When his right-hand fingers found purchase on her backside, she cried out, pitching forward as agony now held the rope.
"I need medical assistance, now!" was barked out somewhere above her head. She collapsed into something firm, warm. Shakily expelling air through her mouth, her body shook against Tucker, who had dropped to a squat in front of her, his calloused hands now cupping her elbows. And whose face was closer again.
"Benson. What's wrong?" She almost missed how his usual gruff baritone spiked, wavering for a fraction of a second, the slightest hint of…was Ed Tucker afraid?
"L-left shoulder blade," she breathed out over his shoulder, teeth clenched. "I don't know what... happened. Sniper?"
Tucker shifted his position in front of her, twisting to the side so he could inspect her back. Sure enough, there was a gaping hole beneath her left shoulder, where rivulets of blood tracked their way down her back like a grotesque map of crimson-stained streets and agonizing avenues. "Dammit. You don't do things halfway, do you?"
Olivia chuckled dryly, gasping when the action jostled her back. "You've known me how long?" she panted.
She cried out again as his right hand pressed against the wound, the other finding purchase on her front. "Sorry," he said distractedly. "I need to get this bleeding to stop."
"Yeah," she exhaled, "yeah. Okay."
As Tucker desperately tried to ignore Olivia's blood attempting to escape from under his palm, his gaze trailed over to the pavement where Joe's body lay, unmoving. Fin locked eyes with the captain, and he nodded towards the figure, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. "Bullet to the head. Through and through. Guy was dead before he even hit the ground."
As he disinterestedly made his observation, his eyes tracking over from the body at his feet to the pair huddled on the road, his eyes caught the flash of red outlining Tucker's hand pushed into his lieutenants' backside. Stepping off the curb, he quickened his pace to them. Carisi, who had been anxiously wearing a hole into the asphalt, unsure of what to respond to, flanked him on the way over. The sight of Benson's crouched form encouraged the brisk walk to break into a jog.
"Shit. What's wrong?" Fin squatted down until he was eye level with Olivia, whose pain-glazed gaze rose to meet his softened one.
"It looks like our sniper made two marks."
"How ya feelin', Liv?" Fin cocked his head, evaluating her.
"Like I've been shot," she spat back, grimacing as Tucker readjusted his pressure on the wound. "I'm—"
"Fine, I know." Fin rested a reassuring hand on her good shoulder, giving it a light squeeze before hauling himself to his feet. "Where are the damn medics?" he asked aloud, eyes resting on the two ambulances parked behind the solid line of SWAT and ESU. The black sea parted to a flash of yellow as a collapsible gurney was wheeled out.
Tucker adjusted his cramped crouch, dropping to the asphalt with a grunt. He gently lowered Olivia down to sit with him, turning her until she was resting comfortably against him, his legs bent on either side of her. Steadying her, he returned his attention to compressing the sluggishly—yet steadily—bleeding wound, brushing aside her hair that had fallen in front of the gruesome sight. Olivia froze as the twisted Van Gough backdrop to her pain stop swirling and sharpened, exploding into vivid Technicolor. Her rapid and shallow breathing halted as his fingertips seared the back of her neck with every accidental brush up against skin, each feathery touch bearing more weight than she'd like to admit.
"Please," she choked out in a strangled whisper. "Don't."
Tucker's hand stilled, his fingers still wrapped in her hair. For a moment she didn't move, except to breathe again, her chest rising and falling with weighty breaths.
"Olivia?" he whispered, extracting his hand from her brown locks, confusion contorting his features. "What—"
"We're going to need you to move out of the way, Captain," a female medic said, rolling the gurney into view.
Before he could respond, he felt himself shoved aside as the EMTs rushed in, the swarm of black like vultures scavenging meat. Fin, in the most unusual of gestures, offered his hand to the captain. Once on his feet, the team of medics was raising the stretcher, calling out oxygen levels and ordering saline as they began to jog over to the waiting ambulance. He caught a glimpse of Olivia's profile, her normally olive skin paling and jaw clenching. Carisi brushed by him, calling out, "I'll ride with her" as he desperately tried to break into a jog.
Fin caught the detective by the crook of his elbow, nodding to the scene behind them. "We need to finish up here first, big guy." Steering him away from the bus, he look pointedly at Tucker as they passed. "Go check on our girl. We'll catch up."
At Tucker's furrowed brow, he sigh exasperatedly. "I'm not stupid."
Tucker gave him a tight smile. "Never said you were."
Sparing one quick glance at his blood-crusted hand, he raced after the bus before the doors could seal him off from the woman who had somehow completely tipped the scale he had so carefully balanced in his work.
"How is she?"
Tucker cracked an eye open, sitting up from his slumped post in one of the couches in the waiting room as the SVU squad rounded the corner. He hated hospital waiting wings; the attempt to make the severity of situations packed in this building cushy, to soften the anxiety seeping the hallways by knocking out the corner of a corridor and painting it blue with cheap furniture arranged in geometric patterns and pictures of painted fruit sparsely decorating the walls. It looked like a damn motel room.
He cleared his throat, pushing himself into a standing position. "She was rushed into surgery almost an hour ago to remove the bullet. I haven't heard anything else yet."
Dodds furrowed his brow, looking down the hallway as if he could see through the OR doors, then returning his quizzical gaze to him. "And you're here because…?"
Tucker cleared his throat again, scrounging to come up with a viable explanation. Except for his, uh, involvement, he had no professional reason to stick around. "Given the situation, one body and a reported sexual assault, I'll need to question the lieutenant about the incident immediately to close the investigation." He winced internally at his bullshit justification. Nice one, Ed.
"Right." Dodds, unimpressed, turned to Carisi. "Carisi, go ahead and check in with the daughter if she's feeling up to it."
With a nod, the detective headed down the hall to the nurses' station, and Dodds returned his attention back to the captain in front of him. "So IAB has to investigate Benson for a shooting unrelated to SVU?"
Tucker just shrugged his shoulders, spitting out the one word IAB parroted whenever they didn't want to explain themselves. "Procedure."
"Right."
Fin cut in coolly, breaking the power struggle playing out before him. "Melinda showed up while we were processing the scene. Said the bullet entered the top of his skull. It was a straight through-and-through."
The trio gazed down the hallway, upon the long-shut doors of the OR.
"Except the path got a little twisted along the way."
Dodds grunted. "At the angle the bullet was coming from, we're lucky there weren't two casualties."
Tucker grimaced, eyes glazing over as unbidden images penetrated his thoughts. He looked down at his hands, red from being scrubbed raw in the hospital restroom. His eyes zeroed in on the tiniest speck of crimson dotting one of his nails, and his stomach turned. The sound of a heavy door swinging open pulled him from his rumination, and he quickly shoved his hand in his jacket pocket.
A grey-haired man in scrubs appeared through the swinging doors, and, drawing the connection from the badges, stalked over to them.
"Family of Lieutenant Benson, I presume?"
The group stepped forward, Tucker hovering behind the other two. Fin spoke up first. "How is she, doc?"
The man sighed, a relieved smile tipping the corner of his lips. "She was lucky. Given that the bullet had already penetrated another person, the velocity was slowed enough to prevent it reaching the axillary artery, which could have caused a number of complications. The slowed passage weakened the bullet, causing it to fragment upon entrance; it took my team a good half hour to recover the bullet in its entirety. She suffered some tearing to the surrounding ligaments and tendons, and a small crack to the scapula; both of which should simply require bed rest and a few weeks of PT. She's already awake and settled in a room."
Relief washed over the captain in a dizzying wave, and he immediately felt spent. Chuckling nervously, he reached a trembling hand to his brow.
Fin smirked. "Damn straight she is. When's she up for visitors?"
The surgeon sighed again, less pleased this time. "She's refusing pain medication right now, so if any of you need to speak with her, I'd do it now before we're forced to pump some drugs into her system before she further exerts herself."
Fin turned to Tucker, a suggestive look crossing his features. "Did you say you needed to grab a statement for IAB?"
Tucker accepted the olive branch, gratitude sparkling in his eyes for a fraction of a second before they dulled to his act of cold indifference. "Y-yeah," he stammered, straightening out as he readjusted his practiced mask of stoicism. "I'll just be a moment, detective. Sergeant." He nodded at Dodds as he brushed past, hoping the chief's son wouldn't notice the way his stride quickened ever so slightly as he neared the post-op ward.
"Twenty-three," she mumbled as the door to her room shut, picking at the frayed hem of the pastel green gown in distaste with the one arm not in a sling.
Tucker paused as the door clicked closed behind him. He immediately saw the chaffing on her wrists, the butterfly bandage on her cheek. He blew out the breath he'd been holding. He wasn't a big fan of the man upstairs, but today he praised this God with more fervor than he'd bet his cousin ever did. She was in one piece.
When Olivia heard the squeak of polished shoes on linoleum that couldn't in any capacity belong to the company of the sneaker-clad Brooklyn cop she was expecting, she snapped her head up, hissing as the small twisting motion pulled on her stitches. She locked eyes with him, and the vulnerable (and slightly unfocused – concussion, check) stare he received stopped the world on its axis. He doesn't think he could ever recall seeing her this exposed (not physically, get your mind out of the gutter, Ed), this emotionally transparent, since Lewis. As if she could hear his internal calculation, her eyes hardened in a flash, revealing no trace of the raw pain he had just experienced drowning in her dark orbs.
To the untrained eye, or more-so to anyone who didn't know Olivia Benson, it almost looked as if she could walk out of the room any minute. But Tucker noticed the light sheen of sweat on her forehead and the way her shoulders were pinched, her back completely rigid as if the slightest movement would send her into a world of agony.
"Twenty-four, twenty-five..." he responded, leaning back against the curtained window. "I didn't think you got hit that hard," he joked, but the levity of his words didn't quite reach his face.
She sighed, shifting on the bed with a grunt of pain. "Twenty-three years," she breathed out in a humorless chuckle. "I thought I was gonna set a new record or something."
"Well you can start again fresh tomorrow," he said, the corner of his mouth tipping up as he stepped towards her. "You feeling okay?" he prodded, noting the now-deep purple bruising around her eye that'd bled to the bridge of her nose.
"I'm fine." She returned his concerned stare, unblinking.
"You know, it's funny. The more you say those words, the less convincing it is."
"I'm really okay," she tried, a sad smile gracing her lips.
"Are you?" He stepped closer again, his jeans brushing against the bed. His voice lowered. "You mind telling me where you went back there, outside the brownstone?" he prodded gently.
She ducked her head down, fixing her gaze again on the stray strands of stitching on her gown. Her mind flashed back to the feeling of fingers running through her locks; those calloused digits she knew belonged to Tucker, but in that present moment repulsively reminded her of the clammy grip of Joe Utley, whose ministrations catapulted her fears back to hands that possessively tugged and ripped at her hair, pressed hot keys and wires against her flesh, explored the most intimates parts of her body…she screwed her eyes shut, her cheeks flushing in shame.
"I'd rather not," she whispered as a single tear leaked out from her closed lids. It had been almost two years; the scars had faded, and yet the hellish branding he'd seared into her soul flared up once again in the form of an inexperienced robber.
Before he could say anything else, a knock on the door sounded and a nurse ambled into the room, pushing an exit port beside her.
Olivia quickly scrubbed her fist over her eye, wincing as she pulled her bruised skin. Tucker observed her carefully-practiced art of ensuring no one could see the walls crumbling with sad interest. He'd never seen the blank canvas before now.
"Lieutenant," the older woman smiled sweetly, "Dr. Runeburg wants to start you on an intravenous morphine cycle so your body can heal properly."
"That's—" Olivia began, quickly sitting up in a show of perfect health.
"—a great idea," he finished, swallowing a smile at her offended glare. "Take the meds, Benson," Tucker chided, stepping back to allow room for the nurse to set up the port and drip. "If you want to get back to the little man as soon as possible, you need to let your body rest."
"Noah," she breathed out, wide-eyed. "Oh, god, I completely forgot," she cried, embarrassed. "I need to talk to Lucy about picking up his inhaler prescription," she pleaded, and the monitors began rising in pitch, becoming more frantic with each panicked phrase spilling from her lips. "Carisi said she'd meet us here at the hospital but his lungs may still be too compromised for this environment and–"
"Liv, Liv," Tucker called, reaching for her shoulders, stilling her dizzying gestures. "I'll talk to Lucy, okay? It'll be okay," he repeated, seeking her face.
Nodding, her eyes glued to his, she slowed her breathing, the monitors settling back into their monotonous rhythm; and she gingerly sat back, cradling her sling to her chest. "Okay, okay," she blew out, a new sheen of sweat dotting her forehead.
The nurse had already prepped the IV as Tucker settled her back into the bed. "Here honey, this will help you relax," she offered, patting her forearm as she started the drip. Almost instantaneously, the drug flooded into her veins, and Olivia melted into the cushions behind her, humming contentedly.
"You feeling okay?" the nurse asked, picking up her clipboard from the end of the bed. A lopsided smile was her generous answer. With a quick note and promise to check on her in a half hour, the nurse left, shutting the door behind her.
Seeing her barely hovering above consciousness, the liquid opiate acting as a weight on her eyelids, Tucker took his cue to leave.
"I'll let the boys know you're okay. Get some rest," he breathed into her hair, pressing a light kiss to the top of her head. She leaned into the touch, sighing, and Tucker stilled before pulling away, not sure whether to chalk it up to the drugs or something else. As he turned to leave before his absence could no longer be excused as taking her statement, her sleep-laden voice brought him to a halt.
"I asked for you, you know," she hummed, gazing at him under hooded lids.
"That's why I showed up," he responded, lips quirking as she yawned, turning into the pillow beneath her.
"You do care, Ed," she said in a sing-song voice, but something heavier underlined that statement that he couldn't quite place.
He huffed out a laugh, amazed at this woman's ability to get under his skin. His job had always been to pry into her work, her life, and yet she was still a complete mystery to him.
"I guess I do, Olivia Benson."
He looked over his shoulder, anticipating some snarky, drug-induced comment, but was met with the sight of a lieutenant blissfully unaware of the world, breathing soft puffs of air into her pillow. Watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest, he wondered if she had heard that last response. If she was aware of just how inexplicably drawn to her he'd become over the years, like copper to aluminum. Both malleable metals continuously molded and transformed by the pressures of the earth. And while life was rusting him away, weathering and softening his very core, she remained untainted, pure. Maybe with some scratches, sure, but she endured as such a clear reflection of the good in the world.
And yet, there was still a spark between the two. A complete circuit. When they were together, it was as if a light flickered on in the darkest corner of his mind.
Oh well. He'd just have to remind her on their next date.