Can I give shout-outs?
Because if I can, then I want to give shout-outs to the following
people:
- Everyone who leaves reviews. I love you.
- Everyone
who leaves long reviews. I heart you.
- Everyone who copies and
pastes in their reviews. Marry me.
- Everyone who is still reading
this. Thanks for sticking around!
"I hold a wolf by the ears." - Terence
*
She ventures back into the hospital after staring at it from across the street for ten minutes. The main entrance looks about as welcoming as the gaping jaws of a legendary sea monster.
Just to visit John, she thinks, and it's a mantra by the time she gets to the elevators. Just to visit John.
To her surprise, John's room is occupied by someone else, and the nurse informs her that Fin picked him up earlier in the day. She smirks as she pictures John loudly debunking the History Channel from the couch while Fin crankily bitches about the noise and makes soup for his convalescent partner. Those two deserve each other, she thinks to herself. But then again, she has good reason to believe that Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle Dumb-Ass think the same of her and Elliot.
Elliot.
"Do you know when the guy in 5536 will be discharged?" she asks the nurse quietly.
"You were here the other day, right?" another nurse asks, and Olivia sees that her name is Cindy and curses inwardly. Cindy needs to mind her own business.
She clears her throat awkwardly. "Yeah, I didn't… he was with his family."
Cindy smiles sweetly for no apparent reason and is automatically, in Olivia's head, now a suspect for some vague crime against humanity. "I'm sure he wouldn't have minded. He asked the night nurse if you'd been by."
"Oh."
The first nurse squints at her computer screen. "Room 5536… if that's the guy I'm thinking of then…" she brightens. "Stabler. He's being discharged today," she supplies. And then she is off to the other side of the desk and Olivia is alone with The Nurse Who Sees Too Much. She quickly excuses herself and walks down the hallway, ignoring the heaviness that drags her feet on the floor with every step.
When she arrives, Elliot is sitting up in his bed, poking the area near the hole in his own torso with a grimace.
Ass.
"If you bust your own stitches, I'm not calling the nurse," she says lamely, and his head shoots up and their eyes meet and she loses every nerve she's ever had. Fuck him, anyway. He's the one dumb enough to get himself shot.
His expression is one-part Pointed and two-parts Tight-Ass. "Nice of you to stop by."
She walks further into the room and it smells of hospitals and something more, something like the crib smells after Elliot doesn't make his bed and still has morning breath. "You look better."
"Thanks."
"How are you feeling?"
"Like someone shot me," he scowls. "And where the hell have you been, anyway? I was starting to think you'd forgotten I was in here."
Something inside of her makes her face wince, and she hopes he doesn't catch it. "Yeah, well… things have been busy."
"Work?"
"Yeah." Work. Talk to him about work. "McCluskey's wife is back."
It works. Elliot almost visibly perks, and his eyes narrow as he shifts from Cranky, Neglected Patient to Cop With A Bone to Chew, and all of a sudden he is her partner with whom she shares her theories and all is right with the world. "Since when?"
"Yesterday."
"Four days after her husband was shot. Who called her?"
"No one. She came by the precinct looking for you. Had no idea he was even in the hospital."
"What'd she want at the station?"
"She was looking for her husband and was told you were handling his case. I brought her here to see him. Fin and I and asked her some questions."
"And?" he prods.
"There's a couple things in her story that don't add up."
He frowns. "Like what?"
"Like why she hasn't mentioned any previous marital problems. Especially in light of what McCluskey said to you and John…"
"Before we all got shot," he finishes.
Her gaze doesn't waver. "Yeah."
Elliot sighs and leans back into the pillows. "You want to sit down?" She does, and he continues to prod his ribcage.
"Don't do that," Olivia instructs absently, and he lets his hand drop back to his side, his face still frozen in concentration.
"So what else?"
"Little things. Wouldn't tell us why she went to Newark to get some space. And there could be the possibility of an affair."
He freezes, and she realizes why. And then she freezes. Adultery has become a hot-button topic in the last several weeks.
She is focusing on relaxing the muscles around her cervical vertebrae when he finally speaks. "Let's pull the LUDS on her phone. And get a copy of her credit card statement."
"Fin's doing that right now."
"Good."
His eyes meet hers and, for a second – awkward adulterous references aside – they are not Elliot and Olivia, Relationship Fuck-Up Extraordinaires. Instead, she is Benson and he is Stabler and they're on the same frequency again. It's nice, and she can feel herself relax a little more because the future doesn't look so bleak if she can count on being able to look at Elliot without thinking about him between her legs. Maybe all of this, what they've done, can be undone. And nobody will be the wiser but her and her half-empty bed.
Elliot's eyes drop from hers to her belly. "How is she?"
She can't help the small grin that takes over her face. "She's good," she replies. "Active."
"Right now?" She nods, and then stills as he reaches out his good arm. "Can I?"
She nods again, slowly, and stands so he can place his palm against the surface that envelopes her daughter's form. He flexes his fingers slightly, and the baby quiets momentarily before releasing a flurry of movement.
"Active's right," he chuckles. "You'll be lucky if she decides not to roundhouse kick her way out of there."
"Here's hoping," she says weakly. The thought of the impending birth makes her tense with anxiety, makes her think of the time she went on a rollercoaster and decided halfway up the incline that she wanted off, but no one heard her and she had to do the steep drop anyway.
"Where's Kathy?" she asks after a moment, cringing as the words leave her mouth. The small smile on Elliot's face is replaced by tension as his brow creases.
"She went home to get the couch ready," he explains after a moment.
"The couch?"
He shrugs, wincing at the movement. "Doctor said I shouldn't do stairs for awhile."
"Ah."
There doesn't seem to be much else to say, since Olivia can't figure out a way to work 'Hey, does your wife know we slept together? Or does she think we're just too close in general?' into the conversation. And she's still a little bit Benson at the moment, so it probably won't come out right, anyway.
The silence drags on, and the awkwardness is a monster in the corner growing larger with each passing second.
"Well, I'd better get going—" she says.
At the same time he asks, "Hear d from Kurt?"
What?
"No," she answers quickly.
As he says, "Oh."
The monster in the corner now occupies one half of the room.
"I, uh, I'm not really trying to hear from him," she explains quietly. "He's made it pretty clear where he is on the whole fatherhood thing."
Elliot's brow creases again, thoughtfully now, and she braces herself. "People change."
Her eyebrow arches. "Do they?"
"I wasn't ready for Maureen," and she imagines he would shrug if he didn't have a hole in his chest. "But I got ready. Maybe he just needs some time."
Time. The one thing she doesn't have.
There is an insecurity that lives somewhere in the pit of her stomach, the one that says she's unloved and unlovable and has thunder thighs, and it rears it's head and explains Elliot's words. Since when is he a fan of Kurt's? it hisses. He's giving himself an out. If you have Kurt, he can have Kathy. Everybody wins but you, and it's because you'll have Kurt and he'll have Kathy…
Irrational. Unhealthy. Insecure. Shut up, she tells herself.
"Maybe," she replies. "It doesn't make much of a difference."
"Not now," he concedes. "But it could."
"Why are you worrying about it?" she asks with a scowl.
Elliot frowns again. "Every kid should have a chance to know their father," he says quietly.
His words are sincere, and she knows he doesn't mean anything other than, Maybe Kurt Shouldn't Be Dead to You Yet. But still.
"I wouldn't know," she rejoins coldly.
It takes him two seconds to realize the reason for the change in her demeanor, and he grimaces. "I didn't mean—"
"Sure you didn't," she snaps. "But I didn't ever know my dad, so how the hell am I supposed to know that not knowing the guy's kind of a big deal?"
"Olivia, you know that's—"
"And what's with the sudden support for Kurt, anyway? Did I miss something?"
"You know I can't stand the guy," he snaps. "But what I think isn't the issue—"
And maybe it's the hormones. But it's probably not the hormones, it's probably the anger that has been building up inside of her since the night she handed him his necktie and watched him scurry out of her bedroom, and now Elliot is lying there looking at her like he used to. Like he's getting ready to fix her life and she fucking hates that look and all of a sudden she sees red and she wants to throttle him until he does everything she wants him to do and likes it. "You're absolutely right. You should probably save your energy to run your own family."
That sinks in and she sees the change in his face when it hits home.
Elliot scowls. "Olivia," he says wearily, scrubbing down his face with his good hand. "Just wait one second—"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, Elliot, but I don't think my situation should be your first priority right now."
"Don't you dare talk to me about priorities," he snaps.
"Don't talk to me about how I should run my life," she retorts hotly. "You have enough goddamn problems of your own without trying to fix mine."
"Then fix them yourself," he says loudly, and she begins to worry about people overhearing. The beeping of his heart monitor speeds up and, furious or not, she'll feel guilty if he survives being shot only to die of a heart attack because of his own damn stubbornness.
"Elliot, calm—"
"No," he bellows, and he's not at Maximum Elliot Capacity yet so it's not as loud as she knows he wants it to be, but she feels she's being screamed at. "Listen to me. We're partners. I know exactly how I've fucked up my life, and I don't need you to tell me about my priorities or that it's none of my business how you manage yours.
"You want to know if I have answers, I don't have any fucking answers, not for this. And I don't know what the hell this is, but I'm in it. And I'm trying to be in it by being honest and telling you that the fuckface editor you picked up might deserve another chance to know this kid. Or at least she might want to know him—" he breaks off, panting, and there is a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.
Her eyes roam his face. "'Elliot—'"
"Don't," he interrupts, gasping. "I don't think I can do this now."
"I'm—"
"Not now," he says again, and his breathing is slightly slower but he's still pale from exertion. "I'm tired of fighting with you."
"Elliot, just—"
He holds up his hand to stop her. "Look, I promise I'll fight with you later. Just give it a rest."
And it's a promise she knows he'll keep, so she folds her hands over her belly and sits with him in silence until looking at him feels like looking in a mirror of misery.
After what seems like hours, a nurse comes in to tell him that Kathy is filling out his discharge papers. And Olivia leaves.
*
That night, her restless sleep is interrupted by more Braxton-Hicks contractions, and she clutches herself as the pangs move throughout her abdomen. Mild cramping my ass, she thinks bitterly as they eventually subside, and she relaxes. She looks to her right as a reflex and then curses herself. Of course her moaning hasn't disturbed anybody, because the pillows on the other side of the bed are still fluffed from when she fixed them last.
Elliot is home now. She wonders if he's sleeping or if he's staring at the ceiling again. She wonders if he's wondering what she's doing.
Then she mutters something profane before rolling over and attempting to sleep. Pull yourself the fuck together, she screams at herself inwardly.
Eventually she falls into a fitful doze, and she only wakes up once to reach for Elliot before disappointment and slumber pull her back, back away from the side of the bed that he's slept on.
