As a general rule, she does not allow herself to remember anything about her time undercover as an inmate unless she is sitting at her desk and knows that she won't get too far into the flashback without someone soon needing her attention somewhere else. She's seen a therapist twice now and will never tell anyone that, ever.
She is still terrified sometimes; scared of how frail she actually can be without a service weapon, hand-to-hand combat techniques be damned. She remembers his hand on her face, the surreal, overwhelming feeling that she's in over her head. She can recall the smell of the grimy mattress, of his blood and even his privates and it makes her sick, but not as sick as when she remembers the utter feeling of helplessness. It had crashed onto her as soon as Harris shut the door, drenched her senses and oozed down her throat until her vocal chords shriveled and she thought she would suffocate. Sometimes she lays in bed at night and wonders if she should practice screaming, just to make sure she still can.
Her memories nauseate her, and she shakes her head and tries to focus on what Elliot is saying to Fin about their latest victim's stories. The girl's account is questionable, it's full of holes, it's mesh, it's Swiss Cheese.
The thought of any kind of cheese makes her stomach curl up again, and she briefly considers making a run for the bathroom before all of a sudden it's too late and she bends over and empties her breakfast into the trash can under her desk.
She can feel the sudden silence and the stares of everyone in her vicinity, and she refuses, refuses to lift her head up and overtly expose how gross she feels. Apparently no one in the room has ever seen a woman throw up; something she's eaten has not agreed with her.
"Here." Elliot is crouched beside her with the water bottle from her desk and a paper towel, shielding her profile from her co-workers who still have not moved on with their morning. She can smell his cologne and his coffee and his fabric softener and even the Head & Shoulders shampoo/conditioner hybrid that her cheap-ass partner uses, and the scents make her head spin, not in a good way. And now she's dry heaving and this is, really, just perfect. Not two months into reclaiming her life as a single woman and already she's down with something.
Elliot's hand is making small circles on her back and it's so typically him, that he would turn into Dad at the first sign of trouble. "Okay?" he asks quietly after a moment.
Her head is still under her desk. "No. Make everyone go away," she moans.
Nothing is said, but a second later his voice is by her ear again. "No one's looking, Liv. Go get cleaned up."
In the restroom, she rinses out her mouth and splashes some cold water on her face and then stares at her reflection for what has got to be something like thirty seconds. She looks tired. She looks old. She looks sick. Just something I ate, she thinks. Something I ate.
But Olivia has been a creature of habit in the culinary realm, and so not even she can put a mental block on the suspicion that is spreading in her gut like a wildfire.
She goes back to her desk and she's pretty sure she's making her lips do a smile-esque shape to ward off co-worker questions. Are you sick? she has been asked three times. Nope, she thinks. Just doing the routine breakfast jettison. Yes I'm sick, you fucker. At least, I'd better be.
Warner picks up on the third ring and, why yes, she does have some time for Olivia this morning. See you in twenty minutes, she says. This had better be good.
She can feel Elliot's inquisitive stare as she grabs her keys and coat. "Doctor's appointment," she offers. "I'll be back after lunch." She tosses a crumpled post-it note into the garbage can and notices that someone has already changed the trash liner.
He follows her gaze. "It had puke in it. You want me to wait for you?" he asks, gesturing to the victim's account that up until five minutes ago was the hot topic of discussion in the bullpen, and she looks at him. If she wasn't so damned preoccupied, she's pretty sure the expression on his face, the solicitude in his voice would make her warm and soft inside, in a good platonic way.
She nods. "I'll make it quick."
*
Some things are better left lengthy.
It is five hours later and she is on a park bench with a square of gauze on her arm and the words 'False Negative' running through her mind on a loop.
"Home pregnancy tests don't detect any of the hCG levels if they're done too early," Melinda's voice informed her, and fuck if she didn't sound like she was shouting from the inside of a well. "Blood tests don't even detect it until anywhere from six to twelve days after implantation."
Olivia knew that. Didn't she know that? She knew that.
"So I'm—" and then Olivia's voice had died somewhere in her throat.
Pregnant, Melinda had helpfully supplied in a tone that was less excited than acutely curious and more gravely concerned. And then some things happened that she doesn't really remember now, and Olivia was standing up and Melinda had looked concerned some more, and after that there were concrete stairs and cracks in the sidewalk and a near-tragedy when Olivia had been too lost in her own head to see the Don't Walk signal. And now she is here on a park bench and there are rollerbladers and dog-walkers and little old ladies and moms with their strollers and each and every one of them is keeping her from going apeshit crazy with maniacal laughter in the middle of Central Park.
There are two little boys running ahead of a frazzled mother, and Olivia would bet her next paycheck that the presence of two children in this particular family is taken for granted. They don't look particularly idyllic, the bigger one is pushing his younger brother into the ground and the little one is screaming, but mom intervenes and settles the mini-brawl and Olivia feels a pang of something that makes her heart quicken. That woman is a mother.
And now so is she.
There is a baby inside of her. A tiny, alien-like being that is less than two inches long and weighs less than ten grams. She is intensely aware of its presence inside her, now, and feels like she should put yellow caution tape around where she's sitting in order to keep those fucking rollerbladers aware of her condition. Just to be safe.
Her body is not her own, she is aware of that on some level, even if it's all still sinking in. Bomb in the oven, some long-lost girlfriend's voice tells her brain. You've got a bomb in the oven.
Bun in the oven. Bun.
Any minute now, she'll wake up and the alarm will be buzzing and she'll have to remember to iron her shirt for today while her bagel is toasting. And then she'll go to work and Elliot will tell her what Eli's been up to and she'll pretend she loves hearing about it. And then she'll go home and—
Elliot.
With a start, she realizes her phone is still on silent and she fishes it out of her pocket. Thirteen missed calls. Elliot cell. Four new voicemails. There is a moment of indecision as she remembers her promise to him to make it quick.
She decides she will apologize to her partner later and phones Cragen. She's taking a personal day.
*
It is eight o'clock and she is on her couch with what feels like the same thunderstruck facial expression that she's had since Melinda's office, when she hears the knock at the door. Of course.
Elliot looks tired and calm and she is relieved. Her central nervous system is such that if he'd blustered in to demand why she hadn't come back to work, she might have just huddled in the corner with a sock puppet and some tin foil and indulged herself with a good meltdown. But he's steady right now, he's in his Stabler the Rock mode and she can use some of that.
"Come on in," she says, and immediately becomes consumed with a ridiculous fear that her voice will betray her secret.
"Everything okay?" he asks. "Cragen said you were under the weather."
"Something like that," she answers. "Can I get you something to drink?"
It's hit-or-miss lately with them, and she's surprised when he nods and shrugs off his jacket. "Beer'd be great."
He is sitting on her couch when she returns with his beer and shit shit SHIT she hopes he doesn't read too much into the fact that she's refilled her glass of water instead of drinking with him; she'd spent part of her afternoon cursing their post-Kurt bar bonding. Tomorrow she'll research Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and punish herself for not knowing everything.
"How was the afternoon?" she asks as she settles across from him.
He shrugs and takes a pull from his bottle. "Didn't get much done. You didn't miss anything."
"Hm."
It is quiet, and not comfortable stake-out quiet when there isn't a lot to say and both of them are fine with that. This silence is pulsing with something, and she figures it's probably his questions and her answer, or maybe it's just the presence in her abdomen that's making her feel vibes in the atmosphere. Soon she'll be one of those ladies in a long flowy skirt who reads auras and chi and crystals and shit.
Elliot's curiosity is up, and he'll ask a question soon that she'll have to answer and shit she feels her news as it crawls up from somewhere in her uterus, up past her lungs and into her throat as Elliot takes another swig and looks at her. "How was—"
"I'm pregnant."
Shit. Ta-da.
Everything is frozen. She's pretty sure that not one molecule of Elliot's entire being has shifted; his hand still holds his beer right at his chin, his eyes are blank. She could leave and come back and he'll still be on the couch, assimilating information, making things make sense. Forming a response.
The air has been sucked out of the room along with Elliot's ability to move and she is thinking, please, please be something other than disappointed or angry.
"Elliot?" Is that her voice again? Secret's out, she wants to tell her vocal chords. Be normal. And while you're at it, tell my eyes to stop leaking. She isn't crying, but today has been too much and she's so, so close. "El, say something."
After a moment, an eyelid flickers and his mouth works, but nothing comes out. He is dumbstruck and she is staring at him, she knows that it probably isn't helping him formulate something to say. But she needs this, she needs him to say that he's surprised and shocked and whatever the hell else but that he'll be on board. She doesn't ask a lot from him, but she needs him to say this, more than she'll ever admit to him.
She isn't sure how much time has passed before she ventures to speak again. "Elliot?"
He looks at her then, like he just realized she's still there. His hesitation is nauseating.
"Liv, I—"
Wait. Maybe that's not his hesitation. Her stomach flips over in her abdomen and begins sending signals to her brain to get her the fuck to a toilet.
Elliot is still trying. "…who?"
"Wait a—fuck." And then she is running with her hand over her mouth to the bathroom, where she empties her stomach contents into the commode and then dry heaves some more when the scent of her bathroom candle is processed by her olfactory senses. First thing tomorrow she is going to do her best to make her apartment smell like absolutely nothing.
She is rinsing her mouth out in the sink when she hears him in the doorway behind her, and she cringes at the reflection of his eyes in the mirror. This will not be painless.
Elliot does not look angry, but her guess is that he's not ten seconds away from Googling baby names for her, either. He looks… confused? Shocked?
Join the club, she thinks.
"Is it Moss?"
He says Kurt's last name like he's referring to a suspect. Who else? "Yes."
"I thought you two—"
She grabs a washcloth and wets it before running it over her face. This conversation will be easier if she's underneath something. "We did. He doesn't know."
"Aren't you going to…"
"Tell him? I don't know. Maybe."
Irish Catholic father of five does not appear to approve, and she was expecting that. Really. But still, come on. She hasn't had a lot of time to make any decisions – twenty-four hours ago she was taking inventory of her lingerie and contemplating getting Casey to persuade her to hit the singles scene again. Now she's a forty-year-old woman who's trying to think of a way to explain to her partner that being knocked up by a casual ex-boyfriend might not be so terrible, maybe. She's not sure yet but this might be something she can do.
Elliot stands in front of her, his brain twelve inches in front of his skull trying desperately to assimilate this information. She can see the wheels spinning. "You don't think he deserves to know? Are you keeping it?"
She uncovers the rest of her face and his fucking eyebrows are screaming 'Whore!' at her as they slant down in a disparaging V over his eyes. Or maybe they're screaming 'What's Happening??' All of her mental faculties have been exhausted and she can't tell anymore. "I don't know," she says simply. "I don't know anything right now. Warner just told me today."
Silence.
By the time he speaks, her scalding-hot washcloth has cooled to room temperature. She is absently wondering how much eye makeup has survived the tsunami of shock that Warner has released into her life when his mouth finally opens.
"Congratulations," he says quietly.
Silence.
"Thank you," she murmurs, but this isn't right. Elliot should be smiling right now, that kind, warm smile he uses approximately once every five years. He should be calling Kathy, calling the guys, asking questions, being nosy. He should be telling her how to go about things with Kurt, whether or not she should move to a different, kid-friendly neighborhood. Elliot should be overbearing and intrusive and…and…a partner . This cryptic, stoic, silent shit is killing her.
Silence.
By the time she figures out that the theme for this encounter is 'Heavy Quiet with Tense Breathing,' he is awkwardly patting her arm. "Call us if you need anything," he offers, but something in his voice is just a bit off.
"Thank you," she says again, because, really, what else can she say?
"You coming in tomorrow?" he asks, backing toward the door. She nods. He nods. "Good. See you in the morning."
And then he is gone.
The idea that there is an actual person ensconced safely within her body has not quite made its home in her head yet, because the loneliness hits her the second she sees his retreating back.