Short chapter... it's as long as it needs to be, in my humble opinion.
They'll get longer soon - thanks everybody!
"Among other things."
Everything's fine, she says to herself as she walks up the steps to her building. Kurt sits patiently in the car, waiting for her to get in safely, and it reminds her of Him and so she keeps repeating calming things in her head like a mantra.
Everything's fine.
It's just the hormones.
The baby is healthy. You're healthy.
Kurt is being Not An Asshole. He's helpful and considerate and he still has some kind of X factor that makes her grit her teeth, but hey, that'll teach her to slum for men around Manhattan bars again.
Everything's fine.
*
She jolts awake in the middle of the night and the weight of it all collapses onto her chest.
Everything's fine, she gasps into the darkness. Everything's fine.
Everything's fine.
Then why, a voice in her head asks, can't you stop crying?
*
It has been three weeks. Twenty-one days.
A part of her wishes she was silly enough to track hours, but the rest of her bitchslaps that area into submission and she contents herself with the awareness of larger increments of time.
John has been back for a week and a half, and he gripes everytime he has to move, but he's okay. Fin hasn't stopped scowling since Munch discovered the gathering of wrappers and other trash on his desk, but it's the kind of scowl that looks like a grin when it's on his face, and sometimes she absently wonders what it would be like to be genuinely attached to a partner without wanting to jump his bones all the time. Must be nice.
Munch had been at work for almost three minutes before Cragen determinedly put Olivia back on desk duty, and this time she doesn't even feel like complaining. She is thirty-two weeks along and this close, this close, to hiring a rickshaw for in-house transportation. She's not sure how much they'd charge, but she hopes it's per mile and not per trip because her to-and-fro from the bathroom alone would cost her a month's rent. Her ankles look like knees.
Elliot has called Cragen twice to tell him that he'll be back soon, real soon, and that he just needs a couple more days, and maybe Cragen wasn't overjoyed, but Elliot hadn't taken a vacation in three years and, ipso facto, practically had the ability to stay home until her daughter's second birthday. She's heard all of this from Cragen.
He hasn't called her.
She hasn't seen him.
This sucks.
*
"Hope you haven't gotten too comfortable flying solo," Cragen says as he passes by her desk Monday morning. "Elliot's back today."
But six hours later, his chair is still empty, her nerves are shot, and her back is killing her from straightening her spine whenever someone comes through the door. She keeps glancing up to see if Cragen's face will give anything away, but all he's said this afternoon is, "It might be a couple more days."
He looks as impatient as she feels.
*
Two days later, and her partner is still playing hooky. Kurt had driven her to another appointment and had spent the entire time being a pain in the ass by asking questions that had been answered during her first two visits. She missed Elliot's morose brooding from the corner.
Fin and Munch spend all morning trading barbs about Reagan's fiscal policies and whether or not Tupac is really dead when something inside of her snaps and she throws her pencil down.
"Liv...?" Munch asks as she stands and pulls on her jacket.
"Be back later," she throws over her shoulder.
Fuck it. She's going to Queens.
*
He's not home, she realizes after rapping on the door for fifteen minutes.
No one is home.
The white house looks almost shabby in the sunlight, and the realization finally hits her that time has not been kind to anything attached to the Stabler family.
Her cabfare requires the rest of her cash, and she calls Cragen as the driver deposits her in front of her apartment; she absently notes that he has no qualms about her safety as he peals back into traffic.
"Are you feeling okay?" Cragen asks.
"I need to rest."
What's good for the gander, she thinks wearily as she crawls into her bed.
*
She jolts awake in the middle of the night, only to find that it is ten o'clock. She's been napping for eight hours.
The fuck, she thinks groggily as she struggles to sit up. Her mouth is dry. She needs water and her vitamins and a neck massage and a bath. Maybe some magnesium tablets and some hot tea…
It takes several seconds for her to realize that there is a constant pounding sound reverberating through the apartment, and she blinks.
The pounding gets louder.
"Will you shut the fuck up?" someone yells. It's coming from the hallway.
"Police, get back inside," another voice yells back. This one's more familiar.
Pounding.
Knocking.
Bullying her neighbors.
She's bleary-eyed and tired and pregnant and angry and confused, but she still has to fight a small smile as she waddles to the door, listening to the verbal skirmish in the hallway.
Elliot's back.
***
Chapter End Notes:
Yay! Elliot's back! How nerdy is it of me that I heaved a sigh of euphoric relief as I typed those words? Everyone's feedback has been so wonderful... let's get some more of those sweet, sweet reviews going!