June 19, 2013
It was late, when Elliot came home.
Home, not just an empty apartment where he slept and rattled around on his rare days off, but home, the place where he belonged, the place where she was waiting for him. It was three weeks today since they'd come back from the cabin, and in that time he'd been working while Liv had been going to her appointments with the shrink. She'd started kickboxing, too, and he knew exactly why and he never once raised the subject with her. What happened in May, Lewis taking her like that, had made her feel powerless, and she didn't ever want to feel that way again, and since there were plenty of worse ways she could have handled it he didn't press her on it too much.
I could get used to this, he thought as he kicked his shoes off by the front door, right next to her sneakers. In three weeks she'd had a couple of nightmares and they'd only fucked maybe once or twice, but on the whole they were adjusting to the change in their circumstances. More than that; they had undergone a titanic shift, a cataclysmic rending of what once had been and a traumatic birthing of something new and fragile, but this new and fragile things was beautiful, too, and he was already hoping, already praying, that he'd never have to give it up. Already praying that he'd spend the rest of his life coming home to her.
The living area of the apartment was deserted but the bedroom door was cracked open, and he went right to it, shedding his clothes as he went, smiling when he caught sight of her curled up beneath the blankets on his bed. Their bed, for now, because Liv's apartment had been cleared by the techs but she still wasn't ready to go back to it and he wasn't about to make her. Elliot had been in her apartment after Lewis took her, remembered the broken furniture and the stolen bedsheets and the acrid smell of burnt flesh, and it'd be even worse now, after they'd dusted for prints and sprayed luminol everywhere. It'd be like something from a nightmare, and he much preferred the dream of her lying in his bed.
"Hey," he called softly from the doorway, leaning against it while he shucked his pants. Stripped down to just his boxers he went to her, lifted up the covers and slid in next to her while she remained right where she was, curled on her side, not speaking to him.
"Hey," he tried again, looping his arm over her waist and kissing her shoulder beside the thin strap of her camisole. She was awake; he could feel it in her, in the tension of her limbs, the way she seemed to draw even tighter into herself when he pressed against her back. That worried him, just a little; without the heat she'd been more hesitant about sex, but they'd been living together for three weeks now, and she never seemed to mind letting him hold her. Sometimes she was the one reaching for him, twining their fingers together, sliding herself beneath his arm like that was where she wanted to be, and he didn't understand why she seemed so reluctant now, couldn't figure out what he'd done that made her withdraw from him.
"You're scaring me, 'Livia," he murmured.
"I'm sorry," she answered at once, and her voice was just a little thick, like she'd been crying. "I didn't mean to. How was your day?"
Her heart wasn't in the question, and he could tell. There was something on her mind, and she didn't want to talk about it, was trying to distract them both from whatever had upset her, was hoping he'd get so busy talking about work he wouldn't remember to ask how she was doing. She was wrong about that; he knew her well enough to recognize the signs that something was amiss, and he loved her too much to let her unhappiness fester.
" 's fine," he said. "What's going on?"
"I don't wanna talk about it."
"I do," he said. "We promised each other we wouldn't keep secrets, remember?"
It was one of the ground rules they'd agreed on when she came to stay with him. They'd agreed that they were both gonna give this thing a shot, that they were gonna try to be a real couple, and they'd agreed not to hide anything from one another, no matter how awkward or uncomfortable they might feel about discussing certain things. For too many years they'd been keeping their feelings to themselves, denying their own wants and tiptoeing around one another; for too many years they'd been unhappy, each thinking their feelings were unrequited, and they'd agreed not to let themselves go back to that place. I'm all in, he'd told her, and she'd agreed, and that meant he couldn't let her shrink back from him now, no matter how unhappy she might have been.
"I don't wanna hurt you," she told him miserably. "I just wanna sleep."
"It hurts me when you hurt," he fired back. "I'm not gonna let this go. We both know I'm almost as stubborn as you are."
"Fine," she breathed after a moment, sounding very close to tears. With her back pressed hard to his chest he couldn't see her face, but he could almost imagine her lower lip trembling the way it did when she was trying not to cry.
"I'm bleeding."
It took a minute for the words to register, for him to understand what she was telling him, what it meant. His heart had leapt with fear, just the thought of her being injured triggering a sudden rush of adrenaline, but then his brain caught up to his nervous system, and the truth settled in his chest, heavy and full of sorrow.
There was only one reason bleeding would make her sound so sad. It was three weeks since they'd left the cabin, four weeks since Lewis took her, four weeks since she'd last been on her heat suppressants, and Liv's period had started. She wasn't pregnant, after all.
He'd known she might not be, known chances were good she wasn't, and he'd known, too, that now would have been a terrible moment for a baby. Olivia's recovery was really only just getting started; it would be a long, long time before she would be able to put what happened with Lewis behind her, and as beautiful as it had been the events that transpired in the cabin had been traumatic in their own way. Having the choice ripped away from her, forced into heat for the first time in her entire life, scared and uncertain about everything; it wasn't the way he'd wanted to have sex with her the first time, and he knew it wasn't anything she'd been dreaming about, either. They were only just starting to figure out what their relationship would look like now, only just starting to get used to living together; adding a baby on top of all of that might have been more than either of them could bear.
But they'd wanted it. Christ, they'd wanted it so much. He'd wanted it so much he'd already picked a name out, could already picture their daughter's face when he closed his eyes, and he knew Liv could, too, and he knew that what they both felt in that moment was grief, grief for a child who never was, for a dream that had not ever come to be.
"I'm sorry," he said softly. The way she was lying his face was very close to her neck, and he closed the distance between them, pressed his nose against her skin and breathed in deep, let the scent of his omega comfort him, even as sorrow filled him. When they were at home she didn't bother with the scent maskers, just let herself be, and he could smell her, warm and soft and sweet, a scent that comforted him on a biological, primal level.
"I wanted it so much," she confessed. "I'd started to think…I'd started to think maybe it was real."
Her voice was so broken, so sad, that it tore at him, made him wish her sorrow was something physical, something tangible, just so he could beat it back with his fists.
"Maybe we don't deserve it," she continued. "Maybe after what we did…maybe we don't deserve to be happy."
"No," he said at once, firmly, fiercely. "Liv, no. What we did…maybe it was wrong, but the man was a monster, and you deserve to be happy. You deserve it more than anyone else alive."
"I'm not so sure about that."
"Listen to me," he said, his lips brushing against her neck as he spoke. "You are good, and you are brave, and you are strong, and this isn't the end, Olivia. This, right now, this is just…this is just a phase. You're taking care of yourself, and you're coming back from what happened, and you got so much life ahead of you, baby."
He called her that now, sometimes. Baby. It had happened more than once in the cabin and she hadn't stopped him and he'd tried it out a few time since they'd come home and she'd laughed and rolled her eyes and never told him to stop, and he couldn't help but wonder if she just liked the reminder that she belonged to him. That he'd chosen her, that they went together, that they were a matched set, now. He hoped she did, and he hoped she heard him say it now, and understood that just because she wasn't pregnant that didn't mean he was gonna walk away. Maybe they didn't have a child to bind them together - yet - but that didn't mean he was free to leave her. She'd crawled beneath his skin, and he never, ever wanted to part from her.
"I guess," she sighed. "It's just…I didn't want to let you down. And now I'm not in heat, and there's no baby, and you get up and go to work every day and I'm just stuck here-"
"And you won't be forever," he reminded her. "And I love you."
Beneath him she gasped, and he knew exactly why, and held his breath, waiting to see what she might do. It was the first time, the very first time, he'd ever told her that he loved her. That he loved her was a forgone conclusion; though it wasn't until the cabin that he'd been forced to face it he had loved her for years, and it was that love that had carried him through some of the darkest moments of his life, and it was that love he prayed would carry her through now, when she needed it most. Heat or no heat, baby or no baby, she was Olivia, and he loved her, now and always.
"Elliot," she whispered his name unsteadily.
"I love you," he repeated. "I'm always gonna love you, Liv. It doesn't take a baby to make me love you, and I'm not walking away just because you aren't pregnant. I told you I'd try again if you want to, and I mean that, but Jesus…I'm not here because of a baby. I'm here because of you. I love you."
For one long, breathless moment she was perfectly silent, and then he felt her body relax beneath him, felt her legs stretch out straight, felt her press herself a little firmly back against him.
"I love you, too," she said, in a tone that seemed full of something almost like wonder, like she could hardly believe she'd found the courage to say it, like just the idea of love was something novel, and remarkable, and maybe a little bit scary.
An idea had begun to form in the back of his mind, something he'd wanted to do for a while now, something they'd talked about, but never acted on, something that he thought might help her see that he was devoted to her, dedicated to her, something that would prove, once and for all, and that he was never, ever, gonna leave her.
"Let me prove it to you," he urged her softly, and to emphasize his point he dragged the edge of his teeth against her neck, conveying without words exactly what he wanted to do, what he meant to do, if only she'd let him.
"You can't bite my neck, Elliot," she reminded him, a little regretfully. "If you do, I really will never get my job back."
"Somewhere else, then," he suggested. The claiming bite was almost always on the neck but everybody talked about those rare bonds that ran so deep it didn't matter where the skin was broken, just that it was, just that the pair had committed themselves to one another, and Elliot didn't know a hell of a lot about that but he did know that what he felt for her was deeper and more profound than any other feeling he'd ever encountered, and he knew, down to his bones, that he was hers. The bite wouldn't change anything; in his heart he was already claimed.
"It might not work," she said, a little dubiously. He might bite her, and it might bleed a little, and scab over, and heal, and not be a proper claim at all, but he felt a strange, almost righteous sort of certainty settle in him. It was gonna work.
"Trust me?" he asked, catching her hips in his hands, preparing himself to roll her under him, if only she'd agree.
"Yes," she said at once.
Carefully, then, he rolled her onto her back, slid himself over her body and scooted down until he was face to face with her plain black underwear, his head pillowed on her thigh and the scent of her wafting all around him. He looked up at her, found her soft lips parted and her brown eyes fixed with longing on his face, and as he looked, as he gazed up at this woman he adored, she raised her hand, and ran her palm gently over his head, encouragement and absolution in her touch.
Here we go, he thought, and in the stillness of his bedroom late at night on a random Wednesday he turned his face into the warm skin of her thigh, and sank his teeth into her, just above her femoral artery.
Her reaction was immediate, and profound; her hands flew to the bedsheets, fingers twisting as she held on for dear life, her back arching, her heels scrabbling against the sheets while the weight of him pinned her right leg in place, and the warm, rusty tang of her blood filled his mouth, while she flung her head back on the pillow and moaned, a rich, throaty sound he recognized all too well. The way her body clenched and shivered, the sound of her; the longer he kept his teeth pressed against her the tighter she wound in on herself until she was coming, orgasming just from the sting of his bite, and he knew it because he knew her, knew what her body felt like when she was lost in pleasure, and he knew it because he could feel it in his own heart, something like the song of angels filling his head, something that felt like coming home suffusing his entire being. When at last she went slack he pulled back from her, and licked a stripe across the mark he had made, soothing away the hurt of it, and when he raised his head he found that the wound had already sealed itself. He was an alpha, and he had claimed his omega, and the ritual was complete, and the red outline of his mouth against her skin would never, ever fade, for all the rest of her days.
"I'm yours," he told her, sliding back up her body, and when he was eye level with her she reached for him, cradled his face in her hands while he stared down in wonder at the tears on her cheeks, the smile on her soft lips.
"I'm yours," she told him, and then he leaned down, and kissed her softly.