She lets him in quietly. No 'Hi', no 'Hello' from any of them. She opens the door and they look at each other and she just steps aside to allow him to walk past her. The door is closing behind him and she turns to look at him.
"What are you doing here?" she asks. His eyes still scare her. They're not icy or heated anymore, their blue is dark and deep.
"What the fuck was that about today?" he snarls. She notices that he's changed his work clothes to jeans and pullover. So he went home and then drove all the way back to Manhattan just to step all over her?
"I could ask you the exact same thing," she says, facing him, returning the glare he has fixed on her.
"No, you can't. You started it."
"I started it? What are you, ten?" she raises an eyebrow in mockery.
"Yeah, you did. What's bothering you, Olivia?" He advances a few steps towards her, but it's his tone and glower that corner her. "Wanna tell me since when you keep track of my fuck-ups?"
"I don't keep track, I only asked you…" she starts but he interjects.
"Sure seems like it. I don't keep track of yours, I thought we don't do that." Elliot takes another step and he's close now. She can see the pulse in his neck, the scar on his chin, she can smell him.
"We don't," she can hear her own gulp that makes her stumble on those two words.
"Then what is it?" Elliot gestures with his head, daring her, his chin briefly juts towards her.
"If you want me to back you up…"she starts and he stops her again and she hates him right now.
"Don't give me that, that's not what this is about," he says in a rough tone and his eyes, that were dark the moment he walked through the door, turn darker now and his presence is overbearing. "So why don't you tell me what this is really about, Liv?" he continues in a gravelly voice that makes her stomach drop, from the vibration of it and from the challenge in his words.
"It's exactly about that," she tries, though she's not even convincing herself.
"The hell it is." His upper lip slightly curls up and she knows he can be an asshole like that, but it's been a long time since this was directed at her. She really hates him right now.
"You know what? I don't have to put up with that. Why did you come here for? To fight with me over this again?" she then replies and her words and her anger build a temporary shield around her.
"You don't have to put up with anything," his voice drops an octave, "but don't expect me to put up with the bullshit you try to sell me as an excuse to all that bickering."
"Just fuck off, Elliot," she spits and her hand gestures towards the door, and she means it, he's finally pissed her off, she doesn't have to take this shit from him.
In the beat that passes she can sense and visibly see the anger and that energy inside him that radiates heat towards her. It should scare her. Only it doesn't.
"Fuck off? You really want me to fuck off, Liv? You really want me to get the fuck out of here?" he pronounces the repeating word in a way that doesn't leave any room for misinterpretation. He's exposing her, he knows something that even she hardly understands or willing to admit, and she hates him so much right now.
"Yes, fuck the hell off, Elliot," she raises her voice and her palms rise to flatten on his chest and she's shoving him.
He grabs her wrists, and with him her natural instincts give way and she doesn't really know what's going on when he pulls her to him and crashes his mouth on hers.
~~~eo~~~
Sighing, Olivia gets out of bed and walks over to the window. She tries to take a deep breath but the knot in her throat doesn't allow her to fill her lungs to the brim.
They tried getting back to normal but they failed miserably. Even if it wasn't evident to anyone else, it was enough that Elliot and she knew it. And then their punishment came so soon after. She thinks that maybe there is something up there, some guiding force, and if there is, that thing hates her. It hates her, because when she saw the look on Elliot's face after he shot Jenna, she realized immediately what he was thinking. He thought that this was his punishment, and then he made sure to share it with her by cutting her off completely.
~~~eo~~~
"You're drunk." She snaps her head to the side, avoiding his mouth. There isn't a shred of alcohol in his breath but that's her only explanation.
"No, I'm not," he growls and his mouth finds hers again. Her hair slaps their faces with the rough motion and her wrists are still held by him. It's a second too late to resist now, because Elliot's lips are already on hers and the wetness of his mouth is rooting her to the taste of him. Her eyes close by themselves and she feels his tongue that grazes her lips, wetting them, and her mouth opens to him, and before she knows it, Elliot's mouth is devouring her, his tongue penetrates her and hers responds, tasting him right back.
Her knees are watery and she can feel his hands releasing her wrists because he doesn't have to hold her in place anymore. One of his arms encircles her waist, pressing her body to his, and her head is nestled in Elliot's other palm, as he's melding her mouth to his.
She's drowning. She's drowning in it all, in his taste and his smell and his strength and in the way her body hums with yearn that is pooling and throbbing between her legs when Elliot slides his palm down her neck to her chest. Her own hands grab his shirt, one fists it at his waist and the other at his shoulder. She can feel his warm skin and his solid flesh through the fabric.
Elliot doesn't waste time, his palm closes on her left breast, pressing it first and then kneading it as he kisses her, his thumb rubs her hardened nipple through the cotton. He fills her with his touch, his heat, his presence. She can hear the moan escaping her throat into his mouth.
~~~eo~~~
She returns to bed and just lays awake, and despite everything that has happened since, she fears the persisting crave to have him with her again. Despite the torment of her thoughts, her body, her goddamn soul, crave to feel him close, answering with his body the heat created in her when she remembers what that body felt like and how it moved on top of hers, and the look on his face when he came inside her. She still throbs with the thought that Elliot, with everything that he was and wasn't to her, was inside her, his mouth craving hers, sliding over her body, savoring her, his eyes looking at her glazed with arousal she put there.
She feels like banging her head against the wall in an effort to grasp what she has done, to grasp that this is the same man that for over a decade she spent most of her time with. She cannot remember the number of coffees and nights and stakeouts they shared, the number of cases they handled, the number of dead bodies or bruised victims they dealt with.
"I'm the longest relationship you've ever had with a man" he once told her and while it pained her, she was also twistedly glad to crown him that. She has seen him in so many situations as a cop, a father, a husband, a raging bull, a protective partner, a cocky asshole, a good friend. She had only imagined him as a lover, and in that one night he kept whispering and groaning her name.
~~~eo~~~
He walks her back and she doesn't resist, she's lost it all to him, to this. She knows that she's moving but she can't feel her feet, she can't feel anything that is not touched by him. Elliot teases her lips, he tugs at them, he pulls her upper lip in between his, he slides his tongue into her mouth, he slides his mouth over her chin and jaw, he kisses her ear, she can hear the wet sound of his hot breath , she can feel his hand on her back and the other moving between her breasts.
She must have been walking backwards because the back of her knees hit something and she opens her eyes just the slightest bit and it's dark, and when Elliot leans his weight in, she falls on her own bed and he's on top of her.
~~~eo~~~
"You know you want to bang your partner," that sperm-spreading pervert told him and deep inside he knew he was right. While he was answering him and telling him that he was a sick sonofabitch, he couldn't help thinking that there must be something inside him that was sending corrupted signals that fuckers like Ken Turner could decode, because he wasn't the first perp that made him feel like he was one of their own. Gordon Rickett and Ray Schenkel certainly crowned him as such, but even little shits like Turner and Maggie Peterson could spot him. "You try to be nice, normal. But there is a part of you that will never be that guy," Maggie told him, and already back then it bugged him to know what she saw in him that made her say that.
She was right. He's not nice, he's not normal, and he did try to be both. But then he fucked his partner and then he shot a kid.
Now Elliot puts the empty beer bottle down, at the foot of the porch bench, and rubs his face and head with both his palms. His life is something that he looks at from a distance and doesn't recognize the outlines of it.
TBC
A/N: sorry for the shorter chapter, but the next one will be longer. Will post next week.
