Authors Notes - This one has been a while coming. Sorry. Nasty case of writers block while I tried to figure out where this was going. Now I know and I don't think Liv and Eli are very pleased with me! Hope you enjoy it!
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He stood in the doorway to her bedroom, watching the duvet shake, and listening to the heartbreaking sobs that emitted from underneath it. He wanted to go to her, hold her and make all the pain go away, but her reaction in the kitchen meant he couldn't, and instead he was just left standing there helplessly, wanting to help her but not having the first clue what he should do.
He'd known it was bad, they all had. They'd watched her over time, every now and again attempting to prompt her to talk about her background and hitting a brick wall each time. Even after her mother died she'd given little away, keeping her defences up. But for all he'd worried about her constantly, he'd never suspected that it was this bad.
Her words echoed in his brain along with her sobs. "A sexually transmitted disease", that was how she saw herself, as an STD. Assumingly that was how she'd seen herself for a long time. Lived with the description day in and day out, ever since she was a child. He failed to see how she'd held it together as long as she had.
Not that she was holding it together anymore.
After a brief trip back to the kitchen to retrieve their glasses of wine, he returned to the bedroom and moved to perch, cautiously, on the edge of the bed. She clearly sensed his presence because her sobs paused briefly and her body stiffened.
"Liv." He said gently, he took a shot in the dark, laying his hand on the duvet where he thought, hoped, her back would be, and slowly rubbed it, like he did with his kids when they were upset, "You said you'd let me take care of you. I can't do that if I can't see you."
Silence. And then, slowly she appeared from underneath the duvet, her face red and blotchy from the tears she'd cried and looking like she could burst into tears again at any moment. He pulled her into his arms, engulfing her in a hug, and this time she let him, leaning into his embrace and sobbing like she was never going to stop.
He comforted her, as before, as he would have done with his kids. Rocking her, cradling her almost, planting soft kisses in her hair. "Liv." he murmured, "You can't think of yourself in that way. You can't hold yourself accountable for what either of your parents did. Its not your fault."
"It is my fault!" She didn't remove herself from his arms, but he could tell from the way that she snapped at him that she was more withdrawn and less open to accepting help than she had been before, "She had to face me every day. Every day she looked at me and relived what happened to her. If there'd been no me, she'd have had a fighting chance of moving on. She never should have had me. She should have had a termination."
"Did she tell you that?" He asked, wondering if the termination idea was another little gem that Mrs Benson had chosen to throw at her daughter in a drunken row. After hearing how she'd broken the news about Olivia's father he wouldn't have put it past her, but Olivia shook her head.
"No." She seemed more subdued now, laying in his arms numbly, even the tears had stopped flowing, "She always went to great lengths to say quite the opposite. But her eyes told a different story. I knew. She'd have been better off without me. She might even still be alive."
"Maybe." He saw her surprise as he agreed with her, and understood why; it was hardly the sensitive, supportive response she might have expected from him but, at the same time there was no point in trying to sugar coat the situation, she'd been living through the nightmare for too long for that to work. Beside which, he hadn't finished…
"Or maybe she'd have ended up dead in a gutter years ago." He caught her questioning glance and so continued, "You said it yourself, she didn't want you taken into care, so maybe you were the reason she hung on in there when she quite easily could have given up and ended it all, no matter what you reminded her of." She didn't respond and so, having reached for her glass of wine and pushed it into her hand, he ploughed on, "Of course Liv, its all academic."
She sipped her wine, refusing to take her eyes off of him, and when she spoke it was softly, hesitantly, a million miles away from the confident, often verging on cocky detective he knew so well.
"Academic how?"
He shrugged, "She's dead." He knew his tone was way too matter of fact considering the content, but he didn't see there was any other way of getting through to her, she was just too bloody stubborn. And actually, to her credit, there were no girlie histrionics in response. Just a cool calm look. A questioning look. A "what are you saying?" without her needing to say a word.
He reached out, lay his hand on her shoulder, "You're alive Olivia, and you have so much to give. Its too late to save her, so why destroy yourself over something you can't control."
She took another swig of her drink, and then placed the glass back on the bedside table and leaned into him, her hand on his chest, her eyes staring directly into his, "Who says I'm destroying myself?"
The answer was once again in her behaviour, in some ways subtle, in others just so blatantly obvious. And again he knew what he had to do. Hated it on one level. No, several levels. For one, he hated hurting her, for two, what hot blooded male could honestly say he'd turn down Olivia Benson twice in one night without a hint of regret. Still, regret or no, he had to. For the kids, for Kathy, for Olivia herself.
He took her hand, the one that had rapidly gone from just resting on his chest to gently caressing it through the cotton of his shirt, "Olivia," his voice was gentle, but firm, there was no other way to be, "if I leave this hand where it is, within two minutes its going to be inside my shirt," he saw her open her mouth to protest and so silenced her with a look that he used to direct her eyes to their legs which somewhere in the previous minute or so had become entwined, and then, to further labour his point - anything to get her to stop - he added, "And you have your "fuck me" eyes on."
That was enough. The crunch point. The one that made her pull away, clearly humiliated to Hell for the second time in the space of the evening. Her fuck me look quickly becoming the look of someone who wanted to curl up and die and although it pained him, it only served to prove his point.
"You're saying you're destroying yourself Liv. With your actions. Your behaviour."
There was no denial from her this time, no attempt to rebuff his suggestion that she was hitting on him. Instead, with her eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling - anything to avoid actually looking at him he supposed - she spoke, sounding more like a sulky teenager than his long time partner, "Is it that wrong to want you? Are you telling me that you've never once glanced at my ass as we've been walking down the street."
He chuckled softly, in spite of the tension between them, he couldn't help himself.
"Of course I've looked at your ass."
That got her attention as her gaze swung round sharply, clearly bemused by his confession.
"it's a good ass Olivia." He said gently, almost playfully, wanting to get her away from the place where she saw him as the enemy, "I like to look. And honestly, if you were just checking me out during the good times I wouldn't be worried. But you don't. Only when things are bad. When you're in self destruct mode, which seems to be most of the time these days, so don't try to tell me you're not destroying yourself. Because you are."
He paused then, waited for a response but none was forthcoming, instead she got to her feet and headed back into the kitchen without another word.
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She was being a bitch to him. An 'A' grade bitch with a 100% GPA in advanced bitchery. But she couldn't help how she felt. The embarrassment, the humiliation, the fact that he was calling her out on every move she made, not to mention the way he seemed to have a clearer insight into what was going on in her head than she did. It wasn't a comfortable feeling having him that far inside her brain.
She busied herself with the meal she'd begun preparing previously, stirring the pasta sauce and throwing together a salad. She quickly became aware that he'd joined her although he didn't speak, instead just placing their glasses on the counter and topping them up from the now half empty bottle.
The silence continued. They were used to silences, were good at them in fact. They were so close that quite often, especially when working a case, they didn't need to speak because they instinctively knew what the other was thinking. Plus, their silences were generally companionable, although that wasn't the case with this particular one.
This one was frosty, Olivia thought, and full of expectation and dread, as they each waited for the other to speak first. He was out of luck on that one though. She had nothing left to say to him.
He must have sensed that in the end because, eventually, sounding almost reluctant he started the conversation that thus far she'd avoided.
"Talk to me Liv."
She looked up at him coolly, her response measured, "What do you want me to say? That I don't blame myself for my mother's death? That I don't hate myself for who my father is? That I'm so over it all and I'm going to stop hitting on you?" She didn't intend to sound angry, but the emotion certainly started creeping in the longer she went on, "Its not going to happen Elliot. I can't just switch it off because you've told me I'm wrong to feel that way. Its easy for you to stand there and say that, but you haven't lived my life."
She picked up her glass of wine, and knocked it back in one, instantly hating herself for the action as in doing so she reminded herself so much of the mother she grew up with, and that alone was enough to get the tears flowing all over again, "You've not watched your drunk of a mother cry herself to sleep because of who you are and where you came from. You don't have to wake up every day knowing that you're half vic, half perp. And you'll never know how I feel about you because I'm not the only person in your life that means anything to you. The only person who cares about you. You've got Kathy, I don't." The minute she started talking about him, about what he meant to her, she regretted it instantly, but it was too late to stop, the floodgates were down, the words were already flowing, "I'm alone Elliot, you're all I have. You mean the world to me, and if that makes me behave inappropriately around you then I'm sorry, but I have never needed anyone more than I need you. I need you so badly that it makes me crazy."
It was not a confession she'd meant to make. Not at that moment, not ever. It wasn't one she'd ever truly admitted to herself until that point, and she knew she should never ever have done so to him. He already clearly felt responsible enough for her, without her piling on the pressure. After all, she wasn't his main priority, not by a long shot. There was Kathy, and Maureen, Kathleen and the twins. He was a husband, a father. Being her partner came along way down his list of priorities.
She sighed, lifted her head from her its position in her hands where it had been buried since her final words had left her lips and looked at him apologetically,
"Elliot, I'm sorry. I should never…"
He moved to her side, putting his arms around her waist, "Don't you go apologising. I wanted you to talk, you talked, and Jesus Olivia, I'm the one who should be sorry."
His apology surprised her, not least because she failed to see just what it was he should be sorry for. "You didn't do anything wrong." she said gently.
He sighed to then, "Yeah I did. I broke you, and that was what I intended to do, I wanted you to talk and you did. But I hadn't given any thought to what came next." He looked bashful, "I just thought if you talked things might be ok. How dumb was I?"
"Not dumb." She objected, "But, naïve. All the same," she added, "its my fault. You shouldn't have to be looking after me. You're out of your depth, and there's too much potential for this to get messy." She looked down at his arms wrapped around her, then behind her to where his hands were caressing her lower back dangerously close to her Elliot proclaimed 'good ass', "Weren't you the one who just called me out for inappropriate touching?"
He shrugged, "Yeah, I guess, but I want to comfort you Liv."
She wanted his comfort, for all the anger, the resentment, she wanted it, needed it. But at the same time…
"You're giving me mixed signals Eli." She moved away from him, although the truth was it was the last thing she really wanted to do. She took the pan of pasta from the hob and started to drain it, waiting for a response from him. But none came. She looked up at him, "Its not helpful."
He put his head in his hands then and when he looked up again, she realised he looked as tired and drained as she felt. He smiled at her sadly, "Its complicated Livvy."
"Livvy?" That was a new one. Benson, yes. Olivia, yes. Liv, on very special occasions, but never ever Livvy.
Again he shrugged, repeating his earlier words, "Its complicated. We're complicated."
She flipped the pasta from the sieve, out onto two plates, although she was starting to doubt either of them would have much of an appetite if the conversation carried on in the vein that it was. "We're complicated?" She asked, putting more emphasis on the first word than the second, "And there was me thinking that it was just me who was complicating matters with my little port slash fuck in a storm act."
"Touche." He fiddled nervously with the stem of his wine glass, suddenly quiet and abashed, almost reluctant to speak, leaving her curious, if not damn right concerned as to what was coming next.
"If I didn't care about you, if I didn't find you so incredibly hard to resist, if I didn't love you, then you hitting on me wouldn't be an issue. But I do, I do, and I do, so actually, yes Olivia, we are very very fucking complicated."
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