August 31, 2007

"You can stay if you want, you know," Elliot told her, breathing in the soft scent of her hair, running one of his hands gently over the swell of her belly. That was his daughter, in there. His child, their child, inside Olivia, growing strong, and every time he thought about it he grinned, proud and pleased and scared all at once.

"Not while your kids are here," Olivia told him, the lightest sort of rebuke in her tone, like he should have known better than to even ask but she wasn't angry with him for it.

Tonight had been, he thought, like something from a dream; he'd walked in through the door and dropped his keys on the table in the entryway, and he'd found Olivia sitting on the couch, playing poker and laughing with his kids. From the minute she - reluctantly - agreed to meet the twins at his place, to keep them occupied while they waited for him to finish up at work, he'd been anxious about it. Anxious about what they'd say to her, whether they'd talk to her at all or make a pariah of her, whether they'd hide out in their room, not wanting to look at her, because every time they did they'd see that she was pregnant, be confronted with the evidence of their father's betrayal. But there had been no tears, no cool silence or raised voices; he'd come home, dog tired, and was welcomed by the sight of Olivia smiling, his children laughing, good-natured banter passing back and forth between them. And so he'd gone to join them, and kissed Olivia's cheek when the kids weren't looking, and then the pizza had come and they had all passed an enjoyable evening together. It was more than he had ever hoped for, more than he thought he deserved, but he was grateful for every second of it.

It was getting late, and he'd sent Dickie and Lizzie off to bed, and they were safely tucked away behind a closed door and Olivia was soft and warm beside him and the last thing he wanted was for her to leave him.

"It's late," he said. Really, it was only just after 10:00, hardly late by their usual standards, but Olivia was pregnant and he wanted to keep her safe, here with him. "I don't want you going out there alone."

"Then you should have let me leave two hours ago," she grumbled. "I swear to God I think you do this on purpose sometimes."

"We were having fun. We could have some more fun-"

"Elliot-"

"We could take the kids for pancakes in the morning."

He was playing dirty and he knew it. Liv loved pancakes, and she'd had fun with the kids tonight, he knew she had, and the promise of spending more time with them, solidifying the tenuous camaraderie they'd developed tonight, that would appeal to her. It was late, and her ankles were swollen, and it was a long taxi ride back to her apartment, and it would be easier just to stay. All she needed was the right incentive, and so he leaned in and pressed a string of tender kisses to the curve of her neck until she sighed and covered his hand with hers where it rested against her belly.

"Fine," she said, trying to sound resigned but her voice came out more like a purr than a challenge. "I'll stay. But I'm not...doing anything with you while your kids are here."

"Understood," he told her, smiling against her skin.

With the matter of their plans for the night settled they both relaxed a little deeper into the couch, and he closed his eyes for a minute, soaking in this all too rare taste of happiness. Joy never lasted long, in their world, and he wanted to savor it.

"Been thinking," he said, leaning his head back. He had one arm wrapped around her shoulders, and she leaned into his side, and he reached to gently run his fingers through her soft, dark hair, content, and she hummed to let him know she was listening.

"The twins are only here every other weekend. We could put a crib in their room."

What he really wanted to say was, we could make that room a nursery. What he really wanted to do was ask her to come move in with him. He had a spare room, which she did not, and that meant he had somewhere to put baby clothes and a changing table. Right now that room just had a set of bunkbeds and a lamp; the twins didn't keep any of their stuff here, just lived out of duffel bags for two days at a time. That room, that could be the baby's room, and when the twins came to stay they could put her in a little bassinet in his room - in their room - and it would be, he thought, the perfect solution. Him and Olivia and the peanut, they could live here happily together. That was the plan he'd formed for them, but he knew better than to just drop a bomb like that on her; she'd need time to come around to the idea, and if he didn't give it to her she'd just take off running.

"Oh, Elliot, no," she sighed. "That's their room. I don't want to take that away from them, they need to feel like they have a place here and I don't want them to feel like they've been pushed out of the way."

She made a fair point, so he didn't contradict her, not right away. Maybe it would make the twins feel like they'd just been shoved into a corner somewhere, like this wasn't their home. Which it wasn't, not technically, but it was their father's home, and they deserved to feel like they had a place here.

"It's gonna be hell trying to find a place with three bedrooms," he grumbled, mostly to himself, but then he felt Olivia tense beside him and realized his mistake too late.

"Olivia-"

"I'm gonna say something, ok?" she told him then, straightening up and running her fingers through her tousled hair. "Will you just...let me? Just don't say anything until I'm done."

"Ok," he agreed warily. Part of him was terrified of her, of what she might have to say that required those instructions, worried that the ease and comfort they'd so recently fallen into was about to be destroyed by her doubts, but he held his breath and resolved himself to keep quiet, because she'd asked him to, asked him to hear her out and not rush to contradict her, and he was learning how to do this dance with her.

"I don't wanna find a new place right now. I know she's gonna need a lot of stuff, and I'll figure out where to put it, but in the beginning I want to keep her in my room, with me. I want her close. And I don't know if it's a good idea for us to go straight to living together. So I don't wanna move in here with you but I don't wanna find a new apartment for me, because maybe...maybe after I've gotten used to taking care of her, maybe after things have settled down a little, maybe then we can find a new place together. I don't wanna move twice. When I do I want to know it's for good. I want to know that's where my baby is gonna grow up."

It was quite the speech from her, and he took a moment to digest it. If there was a part of him that felt frustrated with her reticence, that wanted, more than anything, to convince her that it would be easier for them to be in the same place when they brought the peanut home, when Liv would be exhausted and overwhelmed and she'd need his help, he tried to ignore it in favor of the part of him that bloomed into hope at the idea of Liv thinking about a permanent arrangement for them in the future. She had a point; they'd been spending a lot of time together, these last few months, but they hadn't been splitting the bills or doing housework or juggling schedules. They'd only done the easy stuff, and maybe learning how to do the hard stuff and how to take care of a baby at the same time would be too much. If she just moved in with him right now they could have a handle on things by the time the baby arrived, but she was scared, still, and he didn't want to push her. Maybe she was right. Just acknowledging that they might, eventually, make a home together was a huge step forward for her, and if she was willing to bend maybe he could be willing to be patient, and maybe they could meet in the middle.

"Ok," he said. "That sounds like a plan."

"Yeah?" she asked him warily, turning her head to watch him with dark eyes wide and uncertain.

"Yeah," he said. "There's not a ton of space in your bedroom but you could put a little bassinet or something in there. We could put a changing table in your living room. Find something to put her clothes in. We could make it work."

That made her smile, and she leaned towards him slowly, and he rose up to meet her, kissed her softly, and when their lips brushed together relief flooded through him. It felt to him as if they'd been standing on the edge of a minefield, talking about the future, but they'd found their way through it together safely. We're getting better at this, he thought.

"So maybe," he said, pulling back and brushing the hair out of her face gently, "eventually. You given any thought to where you want her to grow up?"

"I'm not moving to Queens," Liv told him, and he laughed. It hadn't even been a question in his mind; he knew her too well for that. "I've never lived in a house before. I don't think I'd even know what to do with a yard."

"Might be nice for her to have somewhere she can run around," he countered, very carefully.

"We can take her to the park," Liv fired back.

Home, to him, meant a house and a yard and a bike, a place that was all theirs, but Liv had spent her whole life - with the exception of a few years at college - in tiny apartments in Manhattan, and maybe the thought of something so different scared her, just a little. Maybe in time he could talk her around to his way of thinking. Not tonight, though, he decided. They'd come far enough for now.

"Whatever you want, baby," he told her, and she laughed because she knew he wasn't really giving in, was just tabling the discussion for now. She reached for him, smoothed her fingertips over the stubble cropping up along his jawline, and her expression went soft, and thoughtful.

"You know it scares the shit out of me," she said. "Thinking about what it's gonna be like when we take her home from the hospital and it's just me and her. She's gonna need so much, Elliot."

"I'll be there, as much as you want me to be," he said. He'd be there every goddamn second, if he had his way. If he had his way, he'd move his clothes into her closet and only leave her for the weekends when he had to keep the twins, but even then, the thought of being away from Olivia and their baby for just a night or two made him uneasy. How was she supposed to manage a fucking baby all by herself? The older kids, he and Kathy used to take turns; depending on his hours at work, they'd take it in shifts, waking up in the middle of the night to feed them, to change them, to walk them through the house when they were determined not to sleep. How was Liv supposed to do that all by herself, and work at the same time? Kathy had been stay-at-home for years, but Liv would have to get up and drag herself to the station no matter how tired she was, and shit, what if they both got called out on cases at the same time? They'd have to have a fucking nanny, to make this work, and there was a part of him that hated the very idea of it, trusting his baby to a stranger. But what other choice did they have? The job was only gonna give Liv six weeks off, and then it'd be right back to midnight callouts and working overtime. When were they even gonna see the fucking kid?

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked him, her brow furrowing as she noticed the change in his mood. But he really, really didn't want to get into all that shit right now, so he just reached out and tangled his fingers in her hair, and pulled her in for another kiss.

"Absolutely nothing," he told her after a moment. "Everything's perfect."

It was as close to perfect as it was ever gonna get, he thought, and so that meant it wasn't technically a lie, and he didn't feel too bad about it.