A/N: I'm so excited about the positive response to this story and I'm so grateful for each of you that has reviewed it. Keep those opinions coming & I hope you enjoy this chapter!
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Olivia was thankful that Elliot hadn't settled back in Queens. The commute to his current residence was far less cumbersome and given her condition and the time of night, she needed easy.
She walked into his building, flashing her badge to the night doorman and telling him she was going to Elliot Stabler's residence. The doorman looked surprised, "How's he doing? I would've assumed he would've stayed in the hospital after the pummeling he took."
"Yeah, I'm not entirely sure, that's why I'm here." She said politely as she made her way to the elevators.
She heard him say under his breath, "Looks like you took one yourself."
It was the first time since Eli called that she'd given any thought to her appearance. Shit, she probably looks horrendous.
While waiting on the elevator to open, she turns on her phone camera to assess her face. It's not great- black eye, busted lip, and a gash over her right eyebrow. She doesn't want this visit to turn into something about her, she needs to sugar coat what happened.
She's trying to come up with a story in her head when a man stumbles out of the elevator and directly into her painful right shoulder. He slurs a drunken apology before slinking along. His breath smells of vodka and she suddenly slips into another time when she was trying to make a similar excuse.
"The cab stopped short and I hit my face on the divider." She tells him. She can smell his breath when he laughs in her face. She can feel him pinching her newly acquired burns. Suddenly, she hears someone else in the background, wait, she's not in her apartment. She's at Elliot's and the kindly doorman is speaking to her.
"Miss, are you ok?" He sounds genuinely concerned. Between the way she looks and her behavior, he has every right to be.
She clears her throat and shakes her head a bit, willing herself back to reality, "Uh, yeah, I'm sorry. I was just, uh, trying to remember his apartment number. I've got it now. Thanks."
She gets in the elevator, presses the floor button and then takes a moment to shut her burning eyes. She feels the sweat beading on her forehead. The pain in her temple has yet to subside and she finds herself massaging it, absentmindedly.
When the elevator opens, she makes her way to his door. She takes a deep breath before knocking quietly. Eli lets her in. His expression is one of shock, but he doesn't question her.
"Hey, sweetie," she says, ignoring the elephant in the room, wrapping her arm around the teens shoulders, "I came as fast as I could."
She sees Elliot on the couch and beelines for him. He's asleep. Both of his eyes are black. Several gashes cover his face, held together by glue and steri-strips. She can only imagine what a wreck he is under his clothes.
At that very moment, he begins to moan and shake his head. She can hear him murmuring, pleading with an unseen assailant. It breaks her heart because she knows that feeling so well.
"This is why I called you," Eli speaks up, "he only sleeps for a few minutes and then it's this. I'm afraid he's going to roll off the couch or something. I told him to get in my bed, but he said he's fine. I just really don't want him to get hurt any worse, especially since he'll only take Tylenol"
Olivia nods, sympathetically, towards the boy. He's holding an awful lot on those young shoulders. "I'll see if I can talk him into getting in your bed, ok?"
She sits on the coffee table in front of where he lay, struggling on the couch. She gently runs her hand through his buzzed hair. "Elliot. Hey, it's me. You're only dreaming." He continues to moan, she grabs his face softly on both sides, "El," his nickname tumbled from her lips for the first time in a decade , "I need you to wake up for me."
He doesn't open his eyes, but his hands meet hers on his cheeks. "'Livia." He slurs and turns his head slightly until his lips meet the inside of her palms. "Liv." He continues to whisper into her hand in a way that feels strangely intimate to Olivia.
"Yeah, El, it's me. Wake up for me. Please". She says and it's the "please" that does it.
"Uh, Liv?" It's a question. He's still trying to open his painful eyes.
" Yeah, I'm really here." She slips her hands off of his face and rubs his shoulder instead.
"Ok. Good. Why?" He sounds like he hurts and is only able to grunt out one word at a time.
"Eli called. He's worried. And from the looks of you, I don't blame him." She says in a hushed tone. The boy had gone to his room, attempting to give the adults privacy and to get his bed arranged for his father to lay down.
"Uh, well," he can't think of what to say and his mouth is so dry and his eyes are stuck shut.
"I'm going to grab you some water." Olivia tells him and of course she knows exactly what he needs because when has she not known?
He drinks the cool glass down quickly and, when it's empty, she takes the empty glass from his hands.
"Thank you, Liv. I don't deserve you." He says, honestly, as he places his fingers on his eyes and works them open. When they open, they are still blurry. He rubs them again, desperate to look into those familiar big brown eyes. When they finally focus, he's shocked to see her face.
His immediate reaction is that they got to her too and his heart plummets. His voice that has been so thick with exhaustion is strong now and he's totally alert, "Oh my God, Liv, did they do this to you?"
"No and don't worry about me. I'm fine." The lie flows smoothly from her lips and he detects it instantly.
"The fuck you are. Olivia, I know I look like hell, but your face got tapped danced on too. What happened?" He's running his thumb over her battered brow before he can stop himself.
"I had a run in with a white supremacist gang that was holding a girl hostage. That's all, they're all in holding and the girl is fine." She tries to make it sound like it's no big deal. A "run in with" instead of "took a beating from", he knew minimizing language. He knew she was trying to make her own trauma take a back seat to his and it was agonizing to see.
"Liv, you're hurt, this is ridiculous. You should be in your bed, not up in the middle of the night trying to rescue me. I'm going to be fine." He's louder than he should be, she looks defeated and that's not his intention. He comes at this from a different direction, "I'm so grateful for you, Liv. I've never met anyone as brave and selfless as you, but you need to take care of yourself before me. You need to be sleeping."
"You should be too, but you're no better at it than I am." She says softly.
"What do you mean?" He plays dumb, like he doesn't know she just saw him crying out in his sleep.
"The nightmares are bad, huh? Have they started while you're awake yet? When you're just minding your own business and suddenly you're back there?" She asks as a person with insider knowledge and it scares the hell out of him.
He considers lying, but he wants to know why she speaks of PTSD like it's an old friend she spends lots of time with. He knows that if he lies, she will too. He clears his throat, "Only once, so far. It was a car fire I walked by, firefighters were on the scene. For a moment, it was Kath's car. Ya know? It was like I was just right there."
"You need to be seeing a therapist, El. It helps, I promise. The nightmares, the flashbacks- they may not go away completely, but it becomes a situation you can live with. Please, tell me you'll see someone." As soon as the sentence leaves her mouth, she's hearing Lewis say the same thing. She freezes for a moment, trying to get his voice to stop playing. He was right. He was an "agent of change".
"Liv, hey," Elliot is gripping her hand, "where'd ya go?"
"Nowhere," she lies, "listen, these nightmares aren't going away tonight and Eli is terrified you're going to hurt yourself. Will you just humor him and sleep in his bed?"
He looks hesitant.
"For me too, El, please." He absolutely can not turn her down, he never could.
"Ok." He huffs and she smiles, the kind of smile she had when he had told her the very obvious fact, that she was a good mom, and it warms his soul. Even with her battered face, she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen.
She walks to Eli's door and knocks gently. He can't hear what she says to him, but his son gives her a hug and walks out to the couch. Eli and Olivia each support an arm and hoist Elliot to a standing position, walking him to the bedroom. He gets in and covers up.
"Everyone happy now?" He pretends to be annoyed, knowing full well his isn't.
"I am. Thanks, Olivia." Eli says, exiting to his spot on the couch.
Olivia pulls a blanket off the end of the bed and settles into the small armchair next to the bed.
"Uh, Liv, what are you doing?" He's concerned, she's obviously hurt and there is no reason for her to babysit him when she should be in her own bed.
"I'm staying until I know you're over the hump. Eli doesn't need another night of his dad scaring him awake." She tells him in a matter of fact tone.
"Liv, with all due respect, I think you need to take care of yourself. You can't be feeling much better than I am." He pushes her because the guilt he feels is unrelenting.
"Well, Elliot, it turns out, you mean the world to me too and I'm not leaving you under the watchful eyes of a 14 year old boy." She props her feet on his bed before leaning back, "Go to sleep, El."
He knows there isn't any since in arguing with Olivia, so he does as she says. He doesn't know if it's exclusively because she's by his side or just due to the sheer exhaustion, but he has a dreamless sleep.
He wakes up 5 hours later, feeling sore, but much more rested. He is surprised to find Olivia, still in the armchair, sound asleep. He smiles to himself, she's the most loyal friend he's ever had and he contemplates the thought of her one day being something more than just a loyal friend.
He watches her for a few moments in the darkness. He hears her moan lightly in her sleep. He turns the light on his phone and illuminates her face a bit. He's troubled to see the tears running down her cheeks. Then, the moans turn into words, "Please don't, Lewis, I'll do anything. Please." She's sobbing now and his heart is tearing completely in two. Who was Lewis and what had he done to his teflon partner?
He tries to gently wake her, speaking her name quietly. She doesn't wake, but addresses him in her nightmare, "please, Elliot, please help me."
He can't stand it. He gets louder and shakes her before she wakes with a start and begins to rapidly dry her eyes. She's embarrassed, he can tell by looking at her.
She keeps saying "I'm sorry" as she calms herself and begins looking for her shoes. She is mortified. She had planned on helping him and here she is crying. Fucking hate group, got her tripped up in the Lewis loop again and she hates it. She hates her own brain for not knowing how to escape it.
She gets her shoes on, ignoring Elliot's quiet pleas for her to stay, to calm down. It's 4am, she needs more rest, she can have the bed.
She's opening the door when he asks, "Olivia who is Lewis?"
She freezes.