A/N:
This is not my usual writing fare, and not how I usually see them but this alternate view of their reunification would not get out of my head and let me write anything else until it has spoken. Short, fast chapters. A good bit darker than normal and please know I mean it when I say this is going to be MA. If that's not your thing, this isn't your fic and I won't be offended. This may feel OOC, but there are so many versions of them. They aren't mine, but oh how I wish. To the Human Whip for my constant inspiration and motivation, thank you. And to eogotmelike, the video is incredible. I'll post it on my twitter at lyricara.
Good luck to all of us with this one.
Song: Human, Rag'n'Bone Man - it's absolutely everything to this story. Everything. Play it and you'll understand.
The rain is a wall of fury tonight.
It's thick and angry, lashing and violent in the way that it is pounding into the ground. Even the exterior walls of the bar shake from the rolling thunder, and the glass that faces the street is so fogged that she can't see inside beyond it.
The door to the bar slams closed behind her as she enters. She lets her eyes adjust to the shadows and the caverns.
He's back.
No, he's been back.
She'd only found out tonight, and the news inflicted a special brand of brutality. It seems incomprehensible that he's been with the NYPD for as long as this – years - without anyone telling her.
Fuck them all. Anyone who knew, fuck them. Everyone is on her target list tonight. The entire blasted department. Cragen probably knew before he retired. Tucker had, certainly.
She's not sure if they'd been protecting her, or if they'd been protecting him.
He's back and for the first time one of his cases will cross with her squad. Captain Stabler. She almost laughs at the irony because someone must be goddamned kidding. She stayed the course, endured every loss, every terror – and he's right where she is.
The original poster boy for rage.
Fuck him, too.
She will be damned to hell if she will face him for the first time in her squad room tomorrow. She saw his name on the case file tonight. If she leaves this for the morning, the showdown will either be on her turf or his. There will be an audience. Protocol. Niceties. All of it a safety net for him.
Screw that. This is an after-hours kind of history.
She'd scanned the paperwork for his cell. It was an unfamiliar number and she doesn't know what anyone thought this would do to her, but they sure as hell wouldn't have expected what she'd done.
She'd texted him. Immediately.
The Iron Den. 8:00 p.m.
No audience.
Come alone.
She pulls off her overcoat and shakes it out, hanging it on the rack of pegs to her right. Her black jeans are sticking to her because of the humidity. Her simple black pullover is fitted and stops just above the waistband of her jeans. Her gun is holstered just above her ankle boot.
She does not care what she looks like.
Her badge is clipped to her belt, and she might need it later if this comes to blows. She doesn't give a shit if she loses it. She doesn't care if they send her home for two weeks or a month. A year.
The poster girl for rage.
Her blood is too warm beneath her skin, and its pulsing for a fight. She'd been set to boil, and the alarm bells are sounding off that after nine years, she's done with waiting.
It's 7:59 p.m.
He turns when she walks in.
He doesn't need to see her to know she's here. Her arrival is announced in the way the light current of air in the bar shifts, drifts. It's evident in how it changes direction, then bends to her will.
His eyes adjust to the darkness and he sees the shape of her, clad in all black. From her silhouette he can tell her hair is down, storm-styled wild with tangles and waves. It falls just a few inches past her shoulders. She's all curves and fluidity, and still too shrouded for him to see the details of her.
He takes a deep breath and leans backward so the bar top cuts into his lower back. He lifts the heavy tumbler and takes a long sip of the rich Macallan, letting the buttery heat of it burn his throat. He self-soothes by taking one of the carefully crafted perfectly square ice cubes into his mouth. He lets the cube roll over against his tongue once. Twice.
He finally crunches down on it. He hears the cracking of it. Feels the way he pulverizes it, shatters it into a hundred little shards.
Olivia.
He swallows and sets his glass back down on the bar, watching her. His lips twist and to anyone else it would look like a smile, but there's no joy in him tonight. He knows just by her text that she's out for blood and he doesn't disagree with her need.
He deserves to bleed.
Until now the power in the room had belonged to him. But as she moves towards him, he can feel how the energy pauses, holds its breath, then submissively gives itself over to her.
As she comes into focus, he licks his lips. Scrapes his teeth over the lower one.
He smiles slowly, and it doesn't come from within. Outward impenetrability is how he deals with impending incineration.
He's known since the day he left exactly what seeing her again would do to him, and his body reacts immediately, as he expected it would. Then again, his dick has been semi-hard in misguided anticipation ever since she texted him a few hours ago. It doesn't understand that there will be no relief – not even tonight – despite the fact that the only woman who could finally provide it is here.
In front of him.
"Can't remember who bought last so I'll get this one," he rumbles quietly.
Olivia lifts her chin, and he senses the movement before she even shifts her weight. Her arm starts to come up, but he's so ready and instantly attuned to her that he easily catches her by the forearm. His fingers curl into her, the slightest of warnings, and he grins widely now without letting go.
It happened so fast and so quietly that he's sure no one else in the bar would have noticed anything out of the ordinary. They are both far too efficient with their movements at this point to let anyone else into the sucking gravity of their vortex.
Her mouth parts just a little, her black eyes glitter dangerously with the reflections of the bar lights behind him.
Elliott leans into her, until his lips are practically at her ear. "Is that any way to say hello?"
He can feel Olivia shudder, tense and then recoil from the sheer lack of space between them, but she recovers quickly. He recognizes the all-too-familiar energy between them even if she doesn't just yet. He's had years to examine it, play with it, curse it. Understand it.
Use it.
Night after night after night.
Then it's her turn to take control.
Olivia steps closer to him, ignoring his grip on her as if it is nothing more than a nuisance. She turns her head without hesitation and lets her lips stop merely inches from his. She must feel the way his whole body stiffens. Hardens.
She's using it, too. The ether of them. Smart, he thinks.
"I don't do hellos and you don't do goodbyes," she practically hisses into his mouth.
He can nearly taste her, just from the proximity. He drops her arm then and lets the years slip through his lungs, filling him until he could explode from the intense tapestry their lives have been.
The release comes out as a mirthless chuckle. Nine fucking years apart is a drop in the bucket when it comes to this kind of blistering heat.
It's as he'd expected. He can see the pilot light ignite within her, and her anger isn't enough to quell it.
They are the same.
Without confines, the sheer want is a chemical spill between them, eating up things like time and space and abandonment.
Restraint, he reminds himself. Have some goddamned restraint.
He picks up his glass from the bar and hands it to her. She doesn't take her eyes off his as she throws back the contents, emptying it. The ice is still settling back into the bottom when she hands it back to him.
She doesn't lick her lips. She doesn't flinch.
It's as if she doesn't notice the burn of it.
Then again, one fire can only battle another for so long until the flames merge together and become a single, hungry inferno.
-o0o-
