A/N: Am I crazy to update on crossover day? Hope you're in the mood to read! Important: this story doesn't take into consideration the events from OC's episode 4, so there was no intervention, no ILY.

Thanks firetipmyballs for reading the first draft and giving me input and thanks awildmind for betaing and for the more than 3k words of google-doc live chatting!

PART 3

He'd dreaded the moment he'd be found, so great had been his need to isolate after learning Kathy had been the real target all along — but he'd always known it would be Olivia on the other side of the ringing doorbell when it came. Maybe she could help him make sense of everything this new information entailed. Maybe she was just going to make it all even more complicated.

Still, he opened the door.

The worry was restored in her voice, no sign of their animosity left there. She could always put it all aside for his sake, and he both loved her and resented her for it.

"Are you okay?" she said.

He swallowed as he faced the pity in her eyes, figuring there was no use in lying. "No."

"Why would anyone want to kill Kathy?" Olivia walked past him before he could decide whether to invite her in or not, and all there was left to do was close the door and lock them both inside each other's presence.

"I wish I knew," he breathed, his fears confiding in her, the only one he'd ever trusted with them. "What could she have done? And when? Where? In Rome?"

Olivia took a few cautious steps in his direction. "Maybe she witnessed something?" she offered for his sake, her own disbelief in his late wife's innocence not trying too hard to disguise itself.

Elliot waved his hands with exasperation. "What could she have witnessed that she wouldn't have told me about?" He let his arms drop in defeat. "Clearly, there was a lot she didn't tell me about."

Olivia shook her head, letting her eyes drop to her own feet as she fidgeted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, I guess we have more questions than answers at this point."

Elliot ran his hand over his head, staring at the hole he'd punched into the wall a few days prior, when his teenage kid was still living under the same roof as him, when he still believed everyone he loved was about to be killed for their association with him, just like Kathy.

That was one of the few answers he did have now: he was no longer to blame. Not for Kathy's death, not for putting a target on his children's back. On Olivia's back. The relief that washed through him was so overwhelming that it brought guilt as an unwelcome aftertaste.

When he turned to anchor his gaze to Olivia's once again, her familiar shade of brown stared back at him with a look he recognized.

"What did you mean when you said that now Wheatley knows?" she asked, her voice small, uncertainty hanging about her like something palpable, something he could grab.

Elliot could tell that the question had been eating away at her. He vaguely remembered yelling at her in the squad room, blaming her for showing Wheatley exactly who to go after next when he knew he had been the one to kneel beside her on the ground — to choose her. Again. He'd thought she would make the connection; it had seemed so obvious to him.

Nothing was obvious anymore.

"It doesn't matter now," he said, shrugging. "This changes everything."

She nodded, but her eyes remained the same. That look. It was that same look.

As if this whole thing hadn't stirred up enough memories, the wordless confession her glance carried stood before him now as it had stood a few feet opposite him in that warehouse after she had so meaningfully not taken the shot he'd begged her to take.

Don't make my mistake.

We chose each other over the job. We can't let that happen again.

They'd let it happen again.

Her eyes had asked questions and asked for forgiveness then. For comfort. Eyes that now implored him to say they weren't destroyed by what they both hadn't been able to do. Again. Her agony gathered in the corner of those eyes, their blinking glow hitting him like a pattern, like morse code, like a secret language she only rarely spoke.

Did you really expect me to cause your death?

He understood her now. He hadn't been able to take the shot either.

The steps he took in her direction weren't actions he decided upon, but he could see his decisiveness reflected in her alarmed gaze, her stance more vulnerable with every inch he removed between them.

He unintentionally, emphatically backed her into the wall, watching the way her fingertips turned white as she grappled at the blue-covered drywall of his standard-decorated apartment, the uncompromising pieces of furniture their only witnesses as the silence hung for a few seconds, their gazes seizing each other up.

"There's this very specific look you used to give me sometimes," he whispered, his right hand becoming a fist next to his rigid leg as he plastered his left one onto the wall right by her head. "Very rare. You're doing it right now."

What the hell was he doing? He couldn't stop his body from cornering hers, one millimeter at a time.

"What look?" she asked, and he saw her swallowing repeatedly, her throat bobbing nervously.

"A look that makes the…" Another inch lost — or gained. "Badass, independent, self-sufficient cop, the captain..." Their noses were about to touch. "Look like a lost little girl." His eyes ran wild, ignored the remaining distance leading to her lips, lingered there. "Makes me wanna…"

"Elliot…" Olivia warned, but her questioning eyes searched his, then followed their reasoning, landing on his mouth.

"Makes me wanna hold you," he clarified, as if explaining it to himself, putting it into words for the first time — each word came out more easily than the last. "Protect you. Take care of you." He grinned to himself, the rumble of his voice sparking visible goosebumps across her skin even as his tone never raised above a murmur. "As if you'd ever let me…"

She scoffed, looking away for the first time since that look had made its appearance. She shook her head and took her time. She bit her lower lip, and he waited for her to look back at him. When she did, she took a deep breath, as if gathering the courage to say something she'd been holding onto for a long time.

"Elliot…" she eventually spoke, a fearless glint to her eyes now, a certainty to her voice. "During all this time you were gone. There were moments… things that happened to me. Times when I would've given anything…" He held his breath as she paused, and her voice broke when she continued, vulnerability slowly seeping through her again. "Anything for you to be there. And protect me. Take care of—"

Gravity pulled him to her, finally, mouths colliding, before he even knew he was going to kiss her — but it felt like he'd always known he was going to kiss her. Just his lips over hers, affectionately caressing each of them, once or twice, slowly, patiently. His fist dissolved and became a firm grip around her waist; the hand on the wall closed the distance and cradled the back of her head, fingers tangled in her hair as he felt her good arm wrap around his back.

"Liv…" he mumbled into her mouth.

Elliot opened his eyes in a hurry to catch hers, capture the preciousness of the image right in front of him — her bewildered gaze after their first kiss, a look he would never see again, a look he'd waited so long to bathe his eyes in.

Twenty years.

"I won't try to pretend I don't need you anymore," she confessed quietly, relief clear in her features.

Elliot's mind wandered to the darkest places as he imagined where she must have been without him, longing for his protection, as he pictured all the ways he must have failed her, that he had certainly failed her. A gunshot wound to the shoulder seemed like nothing compared to the pain her eyes glistened with, the pain he'd let her withstand alone.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should've been there."

Olivia sighed, releasing a breath she'd been holding for a long time. Maybe years. "You're here now," she said, holding him closer and taking cover in the hollow of his neck.

The way things progressed after that felt as natural as breathing.

Elliot carefully removed her sling, slowly undid her shirt, checking in with her at each button. He slid it carefully down her arms, his eyes slowly paving their way through her skin.

"I'm old now and… I have… scars…" she said apologetically, her voice faint like he'd never heard it, and that's how he knew she stood completely naked in front of him, regardless of any clothing still covering her skin.

Elliot saw the marks. He leaned into her and kissed every single one of them. He framed her rib cage with his fingers.

"You're beautiful," he whispered, kissing her neck, her collarbone. "So beautiful…" The swell of her breasts. "I want you. More than ever."

His fingers traveled slowly to her back to unclasp her bra, index and middle fingers looping around the straps, pulling them down while she undid his tie, his shirt, exposed his chest.

"Careful, your shoulder," he warned when she raised both arms to pull his shirt down his arms. He finished getting rid of the fabric in a swift movement as her bra fell, both anxious for the encounter, his tough muscle and her soft skin. Twenty years.

It was time. Elliot led her down the hall and into the bedroom he'd never slept in, lay her body down on the mattress that had never held any weight before tonight. It was about to hold the weight of their long wait.

His lips unconsciously found the roads to travel her body, as though he owned a secret map she'd never shared with anyone else. His ministrations unlocked sounds long caught inside her throat, confessions condemned to life in prison inside her heart.

"I love you," she breathed when he first slid into her, looking deep into his eyes, and it was like filling her lungs with real, pure oxygen for the first time.

"I wanted you so bad back then," he poured into her ear, the secret hidden in his voice, stirring up the hairs on her neck like a cold breeze. "I wanted you in Italy. All those years." A tear rolled down the side of her face, as though chasing his truth-spilling lips as they spoke.

"I tried so hard to forget you," she offered in return when he increased the speed of his thrusts. "All those years," she moaned his words back to him.

"God, Liv…" he growled onto her throat, his teeth like an animal's, but restrained, just caressing her skin.

All his might was concentrated in his hips, the way he drove into her relentlessly, burying himself and twenty years worth of confessions into her most secret depths, allowing twenty years worth of sensation they'd denied each other.

All those years.

"Don't stop," she pleaded as she tumbled closer to the edge. "Please, El…"

"Come on, Liv," he urged, a hand securing her against him, the other squeezing her breast. "Let go…"

As though commanded by him, as though choreographed with him, as though controlled by him, she came undone a second before he groaned his own release, his voice in sync with hers like everything else, intrinsically connected, invisibly tethered, unspokenly promised to her, and to her only.

He stayed inside her even as their breaths slowed down, their hearts eased their hammering against each other through their chests.

Even as sleep claimed them, they remained as one, afraid as they were that a second of separation could turn into another decade, terrified that untangling meant never uniting again.

It was a risk neither of them was willing to take.

A/N: Let me know if you liked it!