Chapter Twelve – Amor Et Melle Et Felle Est Fecundissimus (Love is Rich with both Honey and Venom)
A/N: I swear to you all* I just let them take me where they want me to take them. That's what writers do, you don't force the plot direction, your characters should develop in a way that seems – natural. ;) That being said…onward!
Song: Amy Shark – Mess Her Up (I can't help it, this song is perfection)
Disclaimer: I don't own these idiots. I just playng with them for a while.
Chapter Twelve - Love is Rich with both Honey and Venom
PREVIOUSLY: When he pulled back she looked up into his blue eyes, her brown ones burning into his with a silent promise as he struggled whether he should say something about how they were going to be late going into the office, she bit her bottom lip where the ghost of his remained. Elliot stared at her, bewildered and yearning for more. She exhaled and sat back in her seat, staring out the windshield as he just stared over at her.
She reached her index and middle finger up and touched her lips, staring straight ahead, while trying to regulate her breathing. One hand resting on the steering wheel. Elliot watched her, his body still turned toward the middle console. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but Olivia took her hand away from her lips and held her palm toward him, shaking the two fingers that had just touched her lips in a no motion.
She hadn't turned to look yet. A million thoughts were swirling behind her dark eyes with the dilated pupils and as her hand tightened on the steering wheel cover she exhaled again.
"Liv-"
"Shut up." She whispered. "Just…shut up. What the actual fuck, Elliot?" She closed her eyes and brought her right hand over and smacked his shoulder, hard.
"What do you mean what the fuck, Olivia, you kissed me back." Elliot whispered, rubbing his arm where she'd just hit. "Why'd you hit me?"
"We can't." She turned her head towards him, and his eyes locked onto hers and he saw sadness behind them. Sadness, and some other emotion he couldn't quite pinpoint. "Elliot, your wife just died. We can't be doing things like that."
"Why the fuck not, Olivia?" he asked, reaching his hand out to place it on her arm. "We've known each other over twenty years – not twenty seconds. You told me you love me. I told you I love you. I wrote you a letter, you wrote me a letter."
"It wouldn't be fair to your children…Elliot." Olivia's face suddenly went stoic.
"I told you I love you in front of them, they didn't even react because they already knew. Don't do that, Olivia." He shook his head. "Don't do that, make that Captain face."
"Elliot." She breathed out, breaking eye contact. "We have to go inside. Let's just go – let's go get this session over with. And then I'll take you back to your precinct and you can get your car and go home."
"Olivia." He whispered, "I don't want you to shut down or run away."
"Run away? Me? I've always been right here, Elliot. Right where you left me. I don't run away when feelings get involved." she took a deep breath.
"You do too, you ran away from me every single time your feelings or my feelings got involved. Liv, I thought we were going to move past this?" He asked, shutting the door to the truck as she clicked the lock button and they met behind the vehicle.
Olivia closed her eyes as he reached his hand around her forearm and wrapped his fingers lightly around her. "I didn't disappear for ten years when I caught feelings for my partner." she whispered.
"Liv. That's not fair. And you did too, you disappeared to Oregon. You disappeared to Computer Crimes." He looked down at her as she opened her eyes and he saw tears welling behind her lashes. "Don't cry. Please." He ran his hand over his short hair, "Liv. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to –"
"Shut up. I wanted you to, but just not right now. I want to - just not right now, Elliot. If we dive into that ocean together, I'm going to drown." She stated, matter-of-factly. "We need to be in the shallows before we can run into the ocean. We need to have a lighthouse that's functioning."
"Liv, that's not our style, we don't wade into the shallow, we always jump into the deep end of things and learn to swim together. And when we do, we come out stronger." He shook his head, glancing down at his watch. "Just – let me try it again?" He asked, eyes hopeful.
"Elliot. Stop. We have to go inside." She put her other hand over his on her arm and squeezed. "We'll discuss this later."
As they began to walk together into the building, he opened the door for her and looked down at her lips once more. She was going to kill him…but what a way to go.
When they had walked into the Suite, Lindstrom's secretary, Nicole, smiled knowingly and nodded to the two detectives. "You can go ahead into the waiting area." She tilted her head towards the door that lead to the green room, and as they began to walk into the door, she picked up her bags out of her bottom drawer and made her way to the door, the two officers were the final session on Friday evenings, Lindstrom had told her that she could leave when they arrived because these two intrigued him. Their dynamic, he had said, was special.
"I hate this color green." Elliot mentioned, sitting next to her on the couch, their shoulders brushing. Her body tensed up as their legs rested against each other. "It reminds me of the velvet of pool tables. And then that makes me think of the Marines and the shitty bars."
Olivia's eyes traveled up to look at the ceiling, and when her neck was tilted back, exposing her throat, she closed her eyes let out an extended sigh. "Elliot. Please."
Elliot wasn't listening, he was staring at her neck. He reached his hand out, without her noticing the movement beside her and placed his thumb over the thin white line that he could just make out. The little scar where she had gotten cut all those years ago, right next to her pulse point. He really did think at that moment that he was going to lose her forever, and that's when he realized that he just couldn't. He couldn't imagine sitting in a car without her by his side, he couldn't imagine running after a perp without her next to him. He couldn't imagine his life without seeing her every single day.
He hadn't known that just a few years later, he would do it. He did ten years without her by his side, and felt like it was a hundred-year penitence.
She reached her right hand around and grabbed his wrist, squeezing her fingers tightly and lowered her head, allowing her eyes to travel to the ring that was still on his left hand. "Fuck." she breathed, "Shit, Elliot." She dropped his wrist and stood up, the absence of his warm legs against hers and his shoulder against her own was startling.
Just then, the door opened and Lindstrom appeared. Olivia was running her hands through her hair and she all but bolted into the room. She put her bag on the ground in front of the couch and sat on the middle cushion. Elliot walked into the room and sat down next to her, their left sides touched.
Lindstrom's hawkish eyes observed the closeness that hadn't been there the last two sessions.
Something, he decided, had happened. It was an interesting observation.
"Good evening, Olivia, Detective Stabler." Lindstrom began, watching Olivia first. She had pulled her bottom lip in her mouth and was sucking on it, her eyes looking down at her hands, which she had folded in her lap. Closing her eyes, she was breathing in, holding for eight seconds, and breathing out. Was she having the beginning of a panic attack? His attention suddenly traveled from Olivia to Elliot, who was watching Olivia intently, and had reached his right hand around her back, tracing slow circles in the middle of her back. Interesting.
"Good evening, Doctor." Elliot spoke, not removing his hand from his former partner's back. Olivia now leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees and her hands coming up in front of her face.
"Olivia, are you okay?" Lindstrom asked, leaning forward, mirroring her body language and his eyes shining with a quiet curiosity and kindness. She didn't answer, because she hadn't found her voice, but she nodded behind her hands.
"So, who would like to start?" Lindstrom asked, leaning back, still watching the two people across from him interact with one another.
"Actually, I was hoping that I could do the majority of the talking this week." Elliot spoke quietly, his blue eyes locking with Dr. Lindstrom's crystalline eyes and then darting down toward the woman who still hadn't moved her hands from her face. She was whispering two words over and over and Elliot didn't want Lindstrom to catch what it was, so he allowed his fingertips to brush the nape of her neck underneath her thick hair, and applied the light pressure that he used to when they would be sitting in the car at a stakeout and she had been upset. This must've sent the message because she quit whispering and took a deep breath.
"That's fine, please, just start wherever you want." Lindstrom sat back in his chair, crossing his legs, and watching the two people across from him.
"Alright, I'm going to do my best here – and I'm going to try to get through this in one fell swoop – so…just be patient, alright?"
"It's your session, Detective."
"Thanks." Elliot nodded. "So, I want to apologize for my general attitude the first two sessions, but I was just…hesitant to believe that therapy could ever benefit me. I have issues with shrinks ever since one of them had me on a psych evaluation back in the day when I told them I had thought about killing some of the perps who injured kids." Elliot shook his head and rolled his eyes, "But thinking and doing are two separate things." He stated, as though trying to reaffirm the fact that what he was saying was true. "That was a long time ago, and things have changed. Justice can't come for people if you take it into your own hands, and no one person should be responsible for the judgement of another person's actions. That's not our job. What our job is, in a nutshell, is to arrest the people who hurt other people, and then allow a jury of peers to judge that person's actions and then give them a sentence. But no matter what happens to that person on earth – well, I'm a firm believer that it's God's decision to be the final judge."
Lindstrom just nodded, from his chair across from them, as though he was agreeing with the Detective.
"But my opinion on therapy has been slowly changing over the past three weeks. I'm seeing my family pushing for me to get better, I'm seeing my boss pushing for me to get help, and I'm seeing my dearest friend pushing for me to get better." He smiles and glances over at the woman who still hadn't moved, "And I want to be better because I believe that my family, my job, and my friend deserve and need me to be better off." He paused, his index finger flicking his thumb nail in an almost snapping motion.
He continued on, "When I left New York ten years ago, it was at the urging of my wife because she felt after the last shooting I had done that all the work they wanted me to do just to go back to the precinct was going to make me miserable, bitter, and she told me that I had lasted twelve years, which was longer than most detectives last in that line of work. She told me my family deserved to spend time with me, I'd earned my retirement, and we could travel or I could get another job doing small-time security or something similar." Elliot's hands were now together and his thumbs were laying over one another, as he shook his hand between his knees.
"I hadn't thought of the implications of leaving my job, but I knew in the back of my mind that if I hadn't of taken the shot, Olivia's life would've been in danger, her career was so tied to mine that the longer we stayed partners, the less her chance of advancing and growth she would be offered. She was my partner, and I couldn't afford to lose her. I started to think, while drowning my sorrow and anger in alcohol, about everything that had occurred. I realized that if I stayed, I would only be holding my partner back. She hadn't sought any sort of promotion because she didn't want to leave me. She hadn't dated, because every single time she did, they would use her or I would meet them and they would get jealous that she had a framed photo of the two of us in her living room. They didn't like how close we were."
Lindstrom looked over at the woman who had leaned back on the couch now and was staring up at the ceiling, with her eyes closed, her arms crossed over her stomach. Even with her eyes closed, he could see her brow quirk when Elliot had said they were close.
"I thought how selfish it was of me to want her all for myself when I was a married man, someone that had never crossed that line. I had missed my chance with her during the time I was separated from my wife…and it was because I was scared of messing up what we had – our ease of conversation, our bantering, our comfort in small physical touches. I didn't want things to get awkward. I valued her as a person more than that."
"Did you ever consider her?"
"All the time." he answered. "I would've considered it had we not been partners. I didn't want to further complicate things."
"Did your wife know?" Lindstrom asked, curious about what the man was spilling to him in front of Olivia.
"She did." He answered, "But surprisingly, she wasn't shocked about how I felt. She would encourage me to talk to Liv when shit would hit the fan. She had told me that Liv understood the darkest parts of my life and she provided me with something that she, as the mother of my children, as my wife, as my high school sweetheart, couldn't provide. She'd encouraged me a few times to try to explore what someone else had to offer. She only told me these things because one thing my wife knew without a doubt was that I was faithful and devoted to my family. In fact, when our last son was conceived, it was because we had been separated and we'd worked this really dark case – Olivia encouraged me to go home. To see my kids. To see my separated wife." He sighed, "I should've stayed with her, things would've been different. A lot of things would've been different…years later, things would've been different. I would've walked away from my job if it meant having a life with her."
At this admission, Olivia opened her eyes and turned her head to make eye contact with Elliot. Her brows had furrowed and a sound of disbelief squeezed out of her chest. "El." She whispered.
"I don't regret my son, but I was thinking about it the other day and I realized that my life has been a colossal collection of 'oops' moments." He shook his head. "And last week, after our session, I was handed an envelope that contained the aftermath of my leaving. I realized that for the first time, I was selfish. I was so fucking selfish in the fact that I thought I was doing the right thing – and instead of things turning out okay, I had failed my partner on a few different levels. When I left, I had requested that my children that had stayed behind not mention Olivia or talk to me about her. I regret this decision now, because of what Olivia wrote in the letter. If I had known, I would've been here in a heartbeat."
Lindstrom's eyes darted over to Olivia's figure, who had further wrapped her arms around her stomach, and looked like she was trying to sink into the cushion. She'd told him. Lindstrom pursed his lips together. Did she tell Elliot Stabler everything that had happened to her, or did she keep one or two secrets like he was sure that she had done with him? He thought about the case she had called him in on this week and realized just how similar her situation with Lewis had been to the psychopath that she'd dealt with this week had been. Was she okay? It was this look that betrayed him as Elliot picked up on it and looked between the therapist and Olivia.
Lindstrom looked back over at Elliot and smiled kindly as Elliot continued on, "Olivia did absolutely nothing to deserve the things that happened to her after I left. After reading the words in her letter last week, I went to her, and I was there for her. Even though it will never make up for the fact I wasn't there the first time, I wasn't going to allow her to think for one moment I didn't care. If I had known, I would've forsaken everything just to be there for her. I wouldn't have disappeared had I known what was going to happen to her after the precinct shooting." He turned to look at her, "She always gets left behind by all the people she lets get close. And I was the one person she trusted to never leave and that's precisely what I did. I don't deserve her." He shook his head.
She opened her eyes now and turned her face toward his direction, but utter a single word. "I let ten years pass in complete ignorance." He swallowed, and reached down where he saw Olivia's water bottle peeking out of her bag, and grabbed it out and took a drink. "I tried to pretend she was living her best life, she was happy, she was in love, that she had settled down with someone and had gotten pregnant with a child of her very own flesh and blood." He rubbed his hand over his face. "I thought that my leaving would allow her to have so much freedom that she wouldn't think of me. I hoped she would forget me. But my heart ached. I would stand on the balcony in Italy at night looking down at all the people and all I would think of was her."
Lindstrom watched, his eyes focusing on the words Elliot was saying as well as the words he wasn't saying.
"When I told Kathy I had to come back for a department meeting, she sprung on me that Olivia was receiving an award – and told me she had RSVP'd both of us to attend. Unbeknownst to me…she told me they wanted me to write a speech. She handed me paper and an envelope and told me I had twelve hours to write whatever I wanted to her, that she wouldn't read it. She told me to be honest with Olivia, and tell her the real reasons I'd left. To be honest. Not hold anything back." He swallowed, looking up at the light fixture on the ceiling. "She said she wouldn't read the letter. And then, she turned around and pulled the sleep mask over her eyes and given me privacy on an International flight."
"When we got here, she seemed tense, Kathy." Elliot sighed, shaking his head. "She'd gone out to lunch with our daughter, Kathleen, and she was adamant that we stop by Kathleen's to pick up something before the awards ceremony that night – we never made it because that was the night the car exploded." He put his head in his hands. "I don't know what it is Kathleen has –" He spoke out loud for the first time, realizing he hadn't asked his daughter about it.
Olivia was watching him, silent, chewing on her bottom lip. "We went out to eat with Kathleen last Saturday morning, Olivia and I." He whispered. "From what I can gather, Kathleen and Liv have been speaking since they saw one another again, and I feel like absolute shit because I realized just how much Olivia means to Katie. Olivia saved Katie's life when she was only seventeen. I hadn't even asked her to do it, but she did." Elliot shook his head again, looking at Olivia now. "I'm so fucking proud of both of them, because no matter what life had handed them, they turned it into something beautiful, something worth living. And I have issues with the fact that I had asked her to not talk to the one person she got along with because it was painful for me." He looked down at his hands now, "And I'm sorry that I took away that friendship and that relationship between the two of them." He whispered.
Lindstrom was just watching, now chewing on his inner lip himself.
"I left my children behind to try to save our marriage and the entire time, I was dying inside." He whispered, shaking his head. "Duty. Honor. Faithfulness." He punctuated the three words.
"I feel like I should be grieving the loss of my wife," he supplied, "But we've not been really happy in years – and I was disillusioned to believe we were." He nodded. His eyes meeting Olivia's eyes and he saw the storm brewing in the depths. "I just want to get back all the time I lost and give it - back to her. I want to be better to tell her that I'm not going anywhere, and I want her to believe it when I tell her these things. I want to grab her and kiss the hell out of her and never let go of her ever again. I want to be the person she deserves." Elliot looked down at his feet, exhaling.
Olivia's eyes had tears in them as she looked like she was about to be sick – where the fuck had that come from?