May 29, 2013
"So, that's it?" Tucker asked.
It was a rhetorical question, so Olivia didn't bother answering.
"You came to, Lewis was gone, you broke free, you called Stabler, end of story?"
Last chance, she thought. This was her last chance to come clean. Her last chance to say no, you know what, I lied, to confess to the truth, to clear her conscience and in so doing ruin not only her life, but Elliot's and Fin's, too. If she didn't tell the truth now she knew she never would; there would be no reason to, after this. After this Tucker was gonna stand up and shake hands with her union rep and tell her to keep her nose clean; after this Tucker was gonna file his reports, and the paperwork and the evidence would all be stored away until some sign of Lewis surfaced, and she knew it wasn't gonna. There wasn't gonna be a trial, no need for her to give more formal testimony. The crime scene techs were still sifting through the evidence but if they hadn't located any trace of Lewis's blood on the floor by now they weren't gonna. This was it, the moment of truth, her last chance to save her soul.
"End of story," she confirmed.
It wasn't the end of the story, of course. It was in many ways the beginning of the story, but the story that had unfolded after she called Elliot was a damning one, and the details of it did not belong to Tucker. She'd not had a chance to talk to Fin but she knew he wouldn't have wavered from the party line, and Elliot was in another room being interviewed by IAB right now and she absolutely fucking knew he wasn't gonna tell the truth; he'd made that plain in the car. The three of them had planned their lies together, and told them well, and this, now, this moment, this was the end of the story. Or at least, the end of the chapter dealing with Lewis. There was more yet to come, more for Elliot and Olivia to figure out together, more questions for them to answer, but right now, in this room, she was laying Lewis to rest, one final time.
"Ok," Tucker said, shuffling his papers together. "Thank you, Detective Benson."
It should have been a relief, she thought, getting this interview over with, watching Tucker switch off the tape recorder, drawing an end to this sorry fiasco. It should have been a relief, to know that she was done telling lies, for now, that Tucker believed her, that it was over, but it didn't feel like a relief. It didn't feel like a burden had been lifted; it felt, very much, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like the fucking Tell-Tale Heart was pounding beneath the floorboards and any second now Tucker was gonna hear it and realize she was full of shit.
"One last thing," Tucker said as Olivia rose slowly to her feet. "Off the record."
She sank back into her chair and exchanged a worried glance with her union rep while fear turned her bones to water.
"You doing ok?" Tucker asked.
The blank stare she gave him then must have looked fucking comical, because all she could think was what the fuck?
Was he actually being nice to her right now? Was Tucker showing genuine human concern? His eyes seemed almost…warm, watching her across the table like he really did want to know how she was, like he really did hope she was ok.
It's gotta be a trap, she thought.
"You've been through a lot, the last few days," he said in a voice dripping with meaning, and oh, shit, she realized with an unpleasant swooping sensation in her belly. He's asking about the heat.
Tucker knew. Tucker had known she was an omega since she was framed for murder; she'd spent some time in jail and she'd been all out of sorts trying desperately to clear her name and there towards the end he'd scented it on her, but by then he knew she'd been framed and he'd kept her secret, and she'd always kind of thought that maybe that was his way of making up for almost having her thrown in prison for a murder she didn't commit. It wasn't like Tucker was ever gonna admit to being wrong about anything, but he'd learned something he could have used to get her kicked off the force and he'd never, not once, held it over her head.
Tucker knew she was an omega and he knew she'd spent the last few days sweating out her heat, half-feral from lust, and he was asking if she was ok, and if she hadn't been so fucking confused by his concern she might have blushed with shame at the thought of him knowing something so intimate, so personal about her.
"Yeah," she managed to croak.
"Good," Tucker said gruffly, satisfied. "Department's gonna want you cleared by a shrink before you can come off leave. Sooner you find somebody to talk to, the better."
"I'll make sure she gets set up with a doctor today," the union rep assured him, and Tucker nodded, appeased.
"Take care, Benson," he said, and then he was leaving, and Olivia was left alone with her union rep, and a strange and not altogether welcome rush of fondness for Tucker washing over her. He was just a man, after all; who knew?
"You need a ride home?" the union rep asked her as they walked out of the room.
Elliot was loitering in the corridor outside; his interview must have finished first, and he must have waited there, for her. Waited, standing for God only knew how long leaned up against the wall opposite the door to the room where Olivia herself was being questioned. Waited, with his hands in his pockets, because he might be done but she wasn't, and he wasn't going anywhere without her. He was wearing blue jeans and one of the black t-shirts he'd bought while they were in the cabin, and he looked as tired as she felt, but he looked at peace, too. Calm, resolute, steady, no sign of having struggled with the ethical dilemma they'd created for themselves, he stood there, waiting.
"My partner's gonna take me home," Olivia said to the rep, though her eyes were fixed on Elliot.
"Ok, then. When you get there, call Doctor Lindstrom, ok? Go ahead and set up an appointment. I promised Tucker you would."
"I will," Olivia promised. She had Lindstrom's card in her pocket, and she was determined to use it. As much as she loathed the idea of seeing a shrink - therapy hadn't helped her much, after Sealview, not as much as Fin's quiet wisdom had done - she was determined to get back to work, and she knew that Tucker was right, that the only way she'd get to come back was through Lindstrom. She'd call the man; the alternative was giving up on the job, and there was no way in hell she was gonna do that.
"All right then. Take care," the union rep said, and then she was gone, and Olivia was left alone with Elliot, Elliot and his blue eyes, watching her like a hawk.
"Let's go home, Olivia," he said.
And so they did.
Elliot's apartment was, in a word, depressing. It was in a perfectly nice building and it was perfectly clean, but there was no art on the walls, no knicknacks scattered about. No brightly colored dishrags in the kitchen, no soft fluffy rugs on the floor in the bathroom. The door to the twins' room was cracked open but none of their things were inside it, just a set of bunkbeds with matching plain navy blankets on them that the twins almost definitely hadn't picked out themselves, because the blanket on Elliot's bed was plain navy, too. The fridge was empty, which was probably for the best considering they'd been gone unexpectedly for days, so while Olivia went to shower Elliot promised to call in an order for Chinese. He didn't ask her what she wanted; he knew already.
The shower was nice, though. The water pressure was better here than it had been at the cabin, and the only body wash she could find was Elliot's Old Spice, so when she stepped out of the steam of the shower and stood dripping on the bare floor she smelled like him, and she liked that. A bag of her things had materialized from the trunk of Elliot's car; courtesy of Fin, he'd told her. Fin had gone to her home and snatched a few articles of clothing and her scent maskers and her heat blockers - which he absolutely, positively, was not allowed to do; Jesus, the sum total of their crimes was really staggering - but she didn't bother with the pills and the perfume, just pulled out some comfortable clothes to change into and a pair of underwear she'd bought for herself. It was nice, being able to wear her own things after so many days without, but she couldn't help but smile thinking about the underwear Elliot had bought for her, thinking about Elliot doing something like that for her, standing there in the store probably blushing all the way to the tips of his ears while he tried to decide what sort of thing she might like. It was sweet, really. He was sweet.
And he was waiting for her in the bedroom when she finally emerged from the bathroom, was waiting there, stretched out on the bed with his eyes closed and his arms folded behind his head.
"Dinner will be here in thirty," he called in response to the sound of the door opening, not bothering to open his eyes.
He just stayed right there, lying on his bed, probably as wrung out and weary as Olivia felt. The bed in the cabin hadn't been as comfortable as her own, and for all the time they'd spent in it they hadn't exactly done much sleeping. Every muscle in her body ached and she wanted, very much, to go to him, to lay down beside him, to roll herself into the circle of his arms and rest with him.
There had been times, so many times, when she'd wanted that in the past. When she'd seen him leaned back in the passenger's seat of the car or stretched out on a cot in the cribs and longed, with everything she had, to go to him. So many times, and yet until the cabin she'd never been able to act on that impulse. It was an impossibility, him holding her, something denied them by the rules of decency and professional codes of conduct. They were alone in his house now, but they weren't in the cabin, any more, didn't have the desperate physical need of her heat to excuse them for taking liberties with one another; they were home, and home meant the job, and all the old obstacles that had kept them apart from one another. And so she hesitated, standing in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom, looking at him, wanting to go to him, wondering if she could.
Only for a moment, though. She only hesitated for a moment, because she remembered every word they'd said to one another, every promise they had made. She remembered the comforting wholeness of holding him inside her and she remembered that there was every possibility she was carrying his baby already. She remembered him whispering you're everything, promising her that what he felt for her was not some new obsession brought on by the heat but something real, and lasting. She remembered, and she went to him.
Went to him, and stretched out alongside him, and her head had no sooner hit the pillow than he was turning to her, snaking his arm out across her belly and cupping his hand around her side, drawing her to him while he buried his face in her hair.
"You smell good," he murmured sleepily.
"I smell like you," she answered. One of her arms had slid beneath his neck and she curled it towards him now, ran her palm gently over the back of his head, holding him close to her.
"I know," he said, and she could hear the grin in his voice. "I like it."
"I bet you do."
They had thirty minutes until the food would arrive, and a lifetime to figure out everything else. For right now, all she wanted to do was rest, there, with him.