A/N: I was not expecting so many people to read this, and dear goodness, I appreciate it. I wasn't even going to continue. I honestly want to die because the pace of this is so slow and I just I hate everything about these idiots and they ruin my life and so, here is chapter two. I won't be updating weekly. It'll probably turn into an every-other-week thing, if not monthly. The chapters take me forever to write, and I write in a notebook so my life is much harder than I need it to be. But no matter what I write, it will never compare to Atlantis so
Her shoulder felt like it was going to blister. She caught a glimpse of the side of him, but he moved to her left, toward Munch and Cragen. Her eyes close, and she flexes her muscles. Every muscle in her body. If he touched her again, it wouldn't hurt. He brushed his hand for a split second on her shoulder. A warning? A greeting? He should know that this isn't okay for her. Her brain shuts off. I shouldn't have come. I could've sent Kathleen the card in the mail. She would've been okay with that. I never should have expected him to avoid me like he should. He's an ass. He does whatever he wants on his own will and only thinks about himself. Always has, always w- She shuts up internally. Her own internal chatter annoys her sometimes, and other times, it makes her tense as hell. Now, it was a combination of both. She reaches down beside her and pulls the strap of her purse up into her lap, and she glances to her left, toward the three of them.
His back is turned and she realizes that he's talking to thei-her captain. He's so familiar, she's not sure she's here. She bites the inside of her cheek, and tosses that momentary theory. His stance is the same as it was. His hands are together, his back is straight, and his feet are apart.
She's watched his hair thin over the years. It's barely changed, but she can only see the back of him. Knowing that she could see his face any moment unnerves her. She doesn't know what she'll see, and she's not sure what she wants to see. She can't see. She looks away when she decides she doesn't want to see. She hasn't heard his voice. And the sound registers with her. A shovel hollows out her guts and throws her heart to an empty warehouse where the beats echo, and she can't seem to find it. Indifference drowns her. Her brain defends itself immediately. His deep, gravelly voice and Brooklyn accent smoothed her thoughts, and she barely recognized it. She didn't hear his forming words answering questions, saying a thank you. But at the same time, she heard the sound, and she had to tune it out. She listened for anything she could. She heard too many feet. Heels, boots, shoes. She heard glasses clinking, and ice, and liquid, and she heard music. She grabbed that. She listened for anything. One specific sound to keep her thoughts in a single, focused direction. Piano. She focused on piano coming from the speaker from across the floor somewhere. It was an upbeat song, but she can't make out the words. When she tries to hear the words, it wavers her focus. It moves quickly and she can't follow it. She tries to dig for the sound of the piano, and it's drowned out by vocal, or guitar, or drums. It drowns out her place to breathe, and she clenches her jaw.
She doesn't like scotch. She wants to drink a beer, and she wants to drop off the card and walk out, and take her shoes off, and throw them off the edge of the planet, and she doesn't want to talk to him, or know that he's near her. She wants to scrub him off of her shoulder. Olivia wants to scream. She wants to ruin him and make him feel miserable. As miserable as she's been these last two I'm not miserable. I function. I'm okay. I'm a good cop. She pulls her purse strap on to her forearm, exhales and brings her sight back, only then realizing that her eyes were closed. Numb it. She hears the same song playing, and it's only been a verse.
This is what she is now. Her time barely moves. She feels everything is slow motion. Uncomfortable. Frustratingly slow, and she wants to shake, but she's flexing every muscle in her body so she doesn't. She doesn't shake. She's fine. She shuts up before she speaks, and from nowhere, she remembers.
From nowhere, she knows. She knows everything, and remembers everything. It floods back all at once and she doesn't know where it's been resonating. She doesn't know why this is happening now. Olivia inhales through her nose to calm herself, and her heart jumps slightly. But she braces herself. She knows her body language will never give away her thoughts. It's taken her years to perfect that. She won't let this take her. He won't take her like this. But, she knows what he smells like. Irish spring. She remembers him. From nowhere, it comes to her, and her throat aches. Her neck hurts, and she aches. She remembers walking on his right. She sat on his right because he was always the one driving. She stood against the back right wall in Interrogation 1 when he talked to a suspect or a perp. When he stood behind her at her desk, and leaned over her, she was always on his right. The right. It was always right. He was right. I'm the longest relationship you've ever-and she squeezes her eyes shut for a second. And she erases that. Stop, Oliv-IA
"...via." She catches. She heard it. He spoke. And she realizes that her eyes, again, are shut. They snap open, and her barriers close. And he was there. In front of her. He's the same. He was exactly the same and he was two years older, and two years less to her. He was in front of her and he was inside her air.
She looks inside him. He's never been so afraid of her. She was nothing like he thought she'd be at this point. She was different.
She isn't tuned to him. She doesn't hear him. He feels a punch in the gut when he realizes that she didn't shift when he did, like they used to. They were satellites. Only one of them has crashed, and he's not sure which one of them it is. He glances at her face, and her eyes don't meet his. He is sitting at the table across from her, and his chair is turned toward her. His knees are near hers. There's about a six to ten inch space between them. And he imagines he can feel her heat. But he can't. He won't. God wouldn't grant him something like that. God doesn't have enough mercy, enough grace, for something like that.
His former captain and friend walked away moments ago to find the picture boards, leaving him alone with her. Moments, seconds, milliseconds, minutes? ago, he said her name - and she straightened a little. She came back. She'd only lost control for a second.
But God, she looked heartbreaking. For so many reasons. Her face. Her composed expression. Her presentation. Her hair. Her hair grew a lot, and it's entirely different. It's wavy. It's almost curly. It goes longer than where he's willing to look. It goes past her shoulders, and he doesn't think about her shoulders. He doesn't think, because he doesn't deserve to.
God, he wants to look at her. He wants to see her. He doesn't deserve to. He does not deserve a damn thing that God conjured enough grace up to give him tonight.
His daughter. God lent him Olivia, and in doing so, he got his daughter back. Years ago, now. Katie's arrest, Olivia, his mother, the story.
His daughter had told him, and he seethed. Chasing snowflakes. Sonofabitch, he seethed rage. She had no right to talk to his mother. This is his family, and she had no goddamn right. After that, Kathy had shut him up. And it blew him away. Kathy stood up for Olivia. Olivia. She was the reason Kathleen was on the medicine, and she was accepting responsibility for her actions because Olivia got through to her when they couldn't. Olivia has a right, Kathy had said. He remembers her face. She frowned and shook her head - irritated with the idea. Not because she didn't like Olivia as a person - but because she was in possession of Elliott, and she was still insecure enough to think that Olivia could possibly jeopardize their family, when she'd proved time after time that she could save it. She still didn't want to believe their marriage slipping downhill was their fault. She bit her tongue and didn't say the next sentence, and they both knew what it was. What she was. Family. Four years following, he sits here, at her wedding. His daughter's wedding. She's getting her wedding pictures taken somewhere in Central Park, and she told him a few weeks ago, she accredits this to Olivia. Olivia. He sits across from the woman who saved his daughter.
"Bet this was a bust on your wallet." Olivia chuckles once. Her voice comes out of nowhere. He watches her flinch when she speaks, and he's not sure why that happened. She hasn't yet looked directly in his face.
"Probably could same about the same as that necklace." He nods toward her. "You look gr-"
"Don't do it, El." Olivia cuts him off. She tilts her head slightly, trying to relieve some of the pain in her neck from being so stiff, and her eyes lift to his. "I'm not here to see you." She says off-handedly. It's not intended to sting, she's just letting him know that her intention was not to come here to see him. Because it wasn't. She reaches her hand back and rubs the nape of her neck, and scratches, shaking her hair a little, as if giving her shoulders and back a second to breathe. Her spine felt hollow. Her eyes left his and went everywhere except back to his face.
And he see's her.
He sees her sleepless nights, and she feels his eyes. The touch her face. They caress her eyes, and she wants to go home.
"I know. I didn't invite you." He speaks. He instantly realized how that sounded. He bit the inside of his cheek and opened his mouth before she...god only knows what. She's so guarded, he can't even see her eyes because she's endlessly moving them. All he wants to do is hold her gaze. If that's the only part of her he can have, then that's what he would take. "That's now what I-"
"I know what you meant." She chuckles humorlessly behind closed, flattened lips, and picks up her drink. She half smiles, and the depth of her eyes is about as deep as her scotch, and he can't read her. She's an entirely new language. She swishes the ice, but doesn't take bring it to her mouth.
She raises her chin, and crosses her legs. "How're the kids?" She asks him. "Besides the married ones." She chuckles and takes a sip. His eyes trail down to her right arm. He remembers this. She does this. She puts the purse in her lap. The strap is half on her forearm, and she's going to leave. She'll try. He doesn't blame her. If the roles were reversed, he wouldn't have shown up. But she gives away endless pieces of her comfort away. Saint.
"Put your purse down." He calls her out on her shit. "She'll be upset if she doesn't see you, and it'll be my fault." He puts air quotes around the last two words, and looks out in the crowd for someone to shoot him. He deserves it. He sees the unsure, forced way that she's sitting. She's purposefully trying to look like she's comfortable and she looks everything but.
But God, she's...He'd known she'd be here. And he'd known she'd shut him down completely. She had every right to, and god, she's going to kill him. Her eyelashes are full. Her skin is shimmering, golden, and her cheeks are lightly blushed. He won't look below that. He won't look at her mouth. She has dark circles covered by the makeup she's wearing, and he says the way her eyebrows slightly pitch up in the middle, like she's afraid of something, and trying to force her face to be composed. She off-sets it with her body language. Her left arm is crossed over her waist and holds her right elbow. That hand holds her drink. She's guarding herself physically, and he knows he won't touch her.
"I can't stay all night, Elliott. I have to w-"
"Work tomorrow, I know. I..." Elliott ground his lips together, and ran his hand down his jaw. His eyes raked her quickly, and he felt like he was giving her his only hand he had. He didn't have any cards to play. He wasn't even sure what they were playing, or if they were at all. He rubbed his hands together roughly. "You don't owe me a damn thing, Liv." His voice dropped lower, and his accent was thick. She wanted to crawl inside his voice and sleep. She wanted to remember what rest feels like. "Say hi to Kathleen. That much." He lifts his head back to hers, and and he sees her eyes flash for the briefest second. Distinct, sharp, and brutal as hell, they flash loss. It leaves as immediately as it arrives, and she nods. She agreed.
He wants to take the drink from her hand and touch her arms. He wants to run his fingers down her bare skin and wrap her in his hands, and watch her head fall forward, and feel her skin chill with goosebumps. He wants her to exhale against him when he pulls her against him, and her body warms. He wants to absorb her and hide her in his skin, and make her forget whatever made that awful look appear in her eyes. He looks at her shoulders. They're as straight as ever. Her posture has always exhausted him. How she holds herself up like this, he doesn't want to speculate. He wonders when she lets her shoulders drop these days. She always looks like she's holding in a deep inhale. But her throat, her shoulders - they move. It's proof of life. She still breathes. She's alive. He scans her again, and his eyes roll over the tops of her arms, and he clenches his jaw, and momentarily narrows his eyes at the almost completely faded bruises. Small ovals, yellowed, nearly back to being the color of her olive skin. Three of them. They look like fingerprints fading away. Realization has him exhaling. He's not sure if it's a sigh, or a release, or just the working of his respiratory system. He sees her. A case too hard. A night too long. Her own arms crossing, and her fingers pushing into her skin, holding herself together. Evidence. The only evidence of a breakdown that he's sure she didn't let come through like she needed it to. A moment's he's positive that nobody had seen, or knew about. His once-over of her was about three seconds, and she'd just felt the awkward silence and not his assessment.
He clears his throat and he puts his hands on his knees to stand up, and she unexpectedly lowers her purse to the ground beside the front leg of her chair. He looks back at her face. He doesn't try to read her. He knows that whatever just changed her position was inside her thoughts, and it's making her sit. His lips flatten into a line, and she grinds her teeth audibly. He pushes himself up off the chair, and she feels her pulse inside her throat, and he starts to turn, but re-thinks and he looks back to smile at her. He watches her eyes widen a little bit, and he flexes his hands.
"I've got about two hundred fifty people to thank, so -" he nods behind him and she understands.
"I know." Olivia nods and gives him a close-mouthed half-smile. Their eyes touch again. They don't immediately dart their looks like they'd both been doing the last few minutes. She cracks inside. The barricades around her mind, her heart, they collapse. Instead of the roaring ice water, she warms from the inside out. She runs her hand through her hair, before she can think about it, and her chest aches with nostalgia. The warmth floods her gut, and she lets herself have this. Have him, for this instant, she has him back. It's the first time she's felt safe in too long.
She's so warm.
Her face flushes a slightly deeper color, and he doesn't acknowledge that he notices it. He's not going to make her feel embarrassed. He doesn't want to give her a reason at all to walk out of here before she sees Kathleen.
He raises his eyebrows and she holds his eyes. He holds hers. They embrace each other the only way they know how to do. They only way they did. The blue and brown melt and run together, and unbeknownst to each other, they both feel the tension in their necks and temples lighten. And they sync. Then they sink. They remember. At the same time, they nod, and smile when it happens.
She feels. She remembers this. She's not unraveling, but whatever this is, it feels right. And she doesn't feel sick anymore. He knows she won't open anything for him. He doesn't expect her to. He backs up, keeping in contact with her.
Just before he turns, he sees move her hand to set her drink down. He speaks to her again.
"You look great, Olivia." He calls back toward her. Olivia's drink hits the table a little louder than intended, and her ice clinks. She flinches, and he smirks lightly at her, then turns toward the unfamiliar couple walking his way, and steps forward.
Her chest tingles, and she wants to laugh.
