A/N: The boy: too old now to celebrate his birthdays and too young to treasure them – uses his hands. Punches his own reflection to see if it is real. Breaks his hand into the opposite of a fist, a conch shell of sinew. Holds it to his ear and can hear the ocean of his bloodline: - Phil Kaye (Beginning, Middle, & End)
DISCLAIMER: I do not own the characters as written on the TV show, but this version of them? All mine.
Lunch was awkward; no one knew what to say, Elliot wouldn't tell Olivia who he called, and DJ was obliviously munching away on his pizza and reading the new comic Olivia had inked for him. After they ate, they needed to get ready for their afternoon classes, hoping to forget about the scare they'd had, but knew there would be no concentration or focus now.
The wind had kicked up, the temperature had dropped, and they'd gone their separate ways to grab heavier coats and hats out of their rooms, along with their books. The walk to and from Hanlin House was quiet, too quiet. The chill in the air told Elliot something sinister was heading his way, but he chalked it up to still reeling from what had happened, and what else could have. Elliot kissed Olivia, a long and slow kiss, and then headed off with DJ to drop him back off at the elementary campus, leaving Olivia to make her way to class on her own.
She watched them for a moment, then turned away. Her senses were heightened, now; she noticed things she hadn't bothered to pay attention to before, as she walked across the freshly mown lawn of the courtyard. The ivy crawling up the sides of the brick buildings, the bell in the tower on the campus chapel rang to the tune of Ave Maria; the groups of students she passed were set in even numbers, their voices carrying in the same low murmur, their uniforms all "customized" identically; the crunch of the leaves that had been falling more and more these days. Her gaze dropped, set now on the cobblestone path, and she pulled the strap of her messenger bag up higher on her shoulder and picked up her pace. She stepped over strewn straw wrappers, crumpled napkins, and a few scattered and frayed bits of colored string. She smirked, knowing what they meant, thinking about how many she'd have to wear if she'd agreed to follow the lewd tradition. How many Elliot would have to wear.
With a sigh, she turned around the bend, and she tried to roll the tension out of her neck and shoulders as she pulled the door to the linguistics building. It occurred to her that all of the buildings were connected, curving around a long stretch, but each had its own separate entrance; no doors from one to the next inside. Strange, but understandable. Another sigh escaped as she headed for the stairs, her creative writing class three flights up, and for the first time since she'd been at Northwood, she looked out the windows as she ascended.
The school was closer to the lake and mountains than she'd realized; the view took her breath away and forced her to stop short of the landing just to appreciate it all. Something about seeing the rich multicolored tones of the trees from this height and watching the clouds roll over the peaks of the Adirondacks made her regret not going on the last climbing excursion and hoped there'd be another one. Maybe she'd join the ski club, if she could convince herself to learn how to ski, or maybe she'd finally let Abby take her to lacrosse practice with her. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn't such a horrendous place after all. She smiled sadly and turned, taking the final steps, and made a beeline for the classroom door, walking through it and plopping into a desk just before the class officially started.
Halfway across campus, Elliot sat in his chair, only half-hearing his Spanish teacher's lecture. His mind was on the call he'd made, the advice Simone Bryce had given him, and the choice he now had to make. With a short grumble, he picked up his pen and opened his notebook, paying enough attention to know he had work to do but not exactly sure what the assignment was. It wasn't important to him, nothing was except the absolute certainty that he could keep DJ and Olivia safe. He'd left himself out of the equation, knowing if anyone wanted to hurt Joe Stabler badly enough, they'd go for him first, and he was willing to be the sacrificial lamb if it meant no one touched his wife or his little brother.
He heard the teacher speak again, a welcome interruption to his thoughts, and he blinked himself back to full awareness in time to hear the prompt, watch the old woman press the button on her stopwatch. As he scrawled his answer to the essay question, fury built in him. With each accented word and foreign phrase he penned, the shattered pieces of his life scraped against his chest. He held his pen tighter as he clenched his jaw, blood pressure rising, he wrote faster, pressing down too hard on the pen as the frustration came to a boil.
The nub of his pen sapped as he wrote the last word, spilling a bit of ink on the corner of the page. With a heaving chest and flaring nostrils, he shook his head, pulled a napkin out of his pocket, and dabbed up the mess he made. "Figures," he spat to himself, swiping the ink into a less noticeable, dryer streak. He rose as soon as the tinny beep of the stopwatch hit his ears, and he tore the page from the notebook, grabbed his books, and slapped his essay on the teacher's desk on his way out of the room.
He'd made it only a few feet before a slightly taller, slightly larger boy got in his way. With a grunt, Elliot shook his head, and shoving his books into his bag, he asked, "What do you want, Jackson?"
"McDaniels broke his ankle last night," Hadley Jackson said to him. He was a senior, star athlete, came from pure power and money, the envy of most of the Northwood boys. "Got totally shitfaced and tried to climb Mount Marcy."
"Dumbass," Elliot scoffed. "Sorry to hear, but ya know, I don't really hang with him or his asshole friends, so why does this matter to me?" He tossed his book bag onto his shoulder and sidestepped around Jackson.
Jackson stayed beside him and slapped him on the shoulder. "Because I need you to take his spot on the team."
Elliot furrowed his brow. "Football season's over, man," he snapped, "What the hell are you…" it hit him, then, the change in season meant change in sport, and around here, the same guys made up most of the teams. "Dude, I am not playing hockey." He rolled his eyes and tried to speed away, but Jackson ran ahead of him to cut him off. "Man, no!"
"Come on, bro," Jackson whined. "Our first game is next week! We need a solid team or we have to forfeit, and you're the only one that ranks high enough on the list to take the spot." He tilted his head. "Think about it, okay? I mean, we play on the Olympic training rink! We get to use the Olympic team's locker room! I mean, none of us were even born, but that game went down in history, and to skate on that rink is an honor. One that, uh, looks good on college apps and," he wagged his eyebrows, "Makes the ladies lift their skirts, if you get what I'm saying."
Elliot let out a snort. "First of all, I'm in a very serious relationship with a girl who is honestly the only skirt I ever want to lift," he narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms, "Second, the Nineteen-Eighty Olympic hockey final is only legendary if you fucking like hockey." He saw the pleading in Jackson's eyes, watched the guy press his hands together and beg. "Man, don't do that," he rolled his eyes and cringed. "I'll think about it, okay?"
"Yes!" Jackson thrust both balled fists in the air. "Thank you, Stabler, man. Thank you!" He playfully punched Elliot's shoulder a few times, then ran down the hall celebrating a victory he hadn't even won.
Elliot shook his head as he watched Jackson skip away, then exhaled as he headed further down the hall, eager to get to his next class, one he shared with Olivia. He needed her to calm him down, take away the queasy feeling he couldn't seem to get rid of by himself. He grinned when he saw her hedging toward the room from the opposite end of the hall. He picked up speed, running now, and when he met her, he picked her up and spun her around, and then kissed her as his hands moved down the back of her Northwood jacket.
"Hello, to you, too," she chuckled, brushing his hair back as she looked up at him. "You're in a mood," she said to him.
He shook his head. "Just missed you," he whispered. "I love you." He kissed her again, then pulled on the leather collar of her coat. "Gets colder here, faster, I think I heard Senora Vargas say something about snow this weekend."
"We're near the mountains," she shrugged. "More than likely." She cupped his face. "What's wrong?" She leaned closer to him. "Who did you call, huh? Talk to me."
He opened his mouth, but the fire alarm blared over anything he was planning to say. He squinted as he looked around, the students filing out of the classrooms and heading for the stairs, and his instincts kicked in fast. He grabbed her hand, pulled her down the hall to the back staircase, and ushered her down them fast. "DJ," he said to her, and like twin firebolts, they bolted faster.
They'd made it outside, into the quad, and a wave of relief flooded them when they saw DJ's class being escorted to the gates by his teacher. They stopped, breathless, and waved at the little guy as they both struggled to catch their breath. Satisfied that he was safe, they made their way over to the common area, each wondering what had set off the alarm.
"Guys!" Carmichael walked over to them with both of her hands in the pockets of her buttoned-up wool coat. "Anyone tell you anything?" she asked, looking from Olivia to Elliot. She watched their heads shake, then smiled as Elliot pulled his Varsity jacket open a bit, slipped behind Olivia, and wrapped it around her. "The two of you," she said, chuckling. "So damn cute."
"So damn cold," Olivia retorted, but she sank backward into Elliot, felt his arms tighten around her, and closed her eyes when he kissed the top of her head. Her head popped up, though, when she heard sirens wailing, and as she turned, a line of police cruisers and a firetruck sped through the open gates to Northwood Road. "What the hell?"
"Shit," Elliot hissed, "Baby, look." He pointed at the first car, a different color blue than the rest, marked with different letters. The man getting out of the car seemed concerned, his head turning in all directions as he shoved his fingers into leather gloves. Elliot looked down at Olivia with fear in his eyes. "This is not a coincidence," he whispered, and he held her a little tighter as he watched Detective Cragen turn again and look directly at him. "That's a six and half hour train ride, three if he took the express, plus a forty-minute bus trip to get here. Shit, if he drove that cruiser all the way up here, he's five and half hours out of his damn way for an alarm that went off three minutes ago. You think he hightailed it up here…"
"When we were heading to the pizza place," Olivia nodded, and she bent her head back to look at him. "He knew you were being tracked, and he knew we were in trouble."
Abby looked at them, confused. "As the girl who saved your asses this morning, please fill me in on why that guy is staring at us like he wants to throw us all in the backseat of that car."
Elliot kissed the back of Olivia's head again, then looked at Charmichael. "Because," he sighed. "I think he does."
A/N: Thanks for reading.