II.
The moon was still too proud to retreat for the sun to take it's place when he returned to her apartment a few hours after he'd left her alone and thinking about everything that she did and did not have inside of her and of all the shadows of regret that haunted her in the dark and lingered in corners of the light.
"We're not doing this," she said when she opened the door to meet his eyes. Her words were thick with conviction and his eyes were combing her over, taking in everything that he had done to her, every stitch that he had removed from her seams, and she looked to him in fear of his next move, his next word, his next action.
She felt like the sand, waiting patiently for the inevitable assault from the surf as it crashed upon it before taking parts of it back to sea with it, leaving the rest to remain incomplete with the memory of what used to be whole.
"Not doing what?" He stepped in towards her, but she stepped away from him, out of the reach of his arms and his eyes and his soul and she would not let Elliot be the thing that destroyed every tower that she had ever built, every ivory tower that she had locked herself inside of because that is how survival, at least for Olivia Benson, worked.
"Elliot, I won't let you drag me into this, because it's just this black hole of nothing, you're going to get nowhere by doing this and you're going to take us both down on the way."
"I have 17 days of vacation." He didn't respond to her because he would have called her a liar, he would have told her that she needed to see what she was comprised of because it was not what she had convinced herself of. This he knew and this he could feel and through this he could love her but he would have to leave her because she would never let herself drift anywhere near where he was.
She noticed that he was wearing jeans and an old NYPD t-shirt and lines on his face that gave away his age and his experience and his travels. And in the dark of the morning, the sky hung low with the moon and stars and threatening sun, she saw that his eyes were not clear and blue and hopefully but dark and blue and missing.
"Come on, Olivia, let's just get out of here for a few days." This was being out of control and running to something with no destination or map or guided tour.
He put his hand out to her, and in this moment of truth she gave him a lie, she moved back from him still, and turned away from his eyes. She would not let Elliot Stabler take the one thing that she knew she had – herself. He was still too unstable and too questionable and love, for Olivia, had to be grounded in rationality and logic and she knew that Elliot was compiled of neither of those. She had never been allowed to love him and now she could not let herself break her own rules for the twisted road left untravelled in his eyes.
"I can't do this with you, Elliot, and I don't think that you should, either. You can't just run away because –"
"Run away? You think I'm running away? I'm standing here, Olivia, trying to take you with me, you need to leave something behind to run away – I don't want to do that." He shook his head, his breathing turning fast as he saw Olivia's eyes through her tears, shining like the sun through the mid-summer's rain and this was everything he was controlled and conditioned not to want, standing in front of him a nice package of regret and fear and something that would never unravel long enough for him to get down on his knees, his hands folded in prayer, and recite his confessions.
The moment he started loving her had slid from his mind like the sun from the sky at the days end, and he felt as if it were perpetual, a perpetual love that had no definition, but he felt her heart build itself a shelter and he watched her hide within and he would forever remember the moment that she refused to acknowledge this.
Elliot turned his hand so that it was palm up and caught the fireflies in Olivia's eyes with the nets in his and he held them for a moment before giving her his smile, which she took to add to her pile of memories.
"In the palm of your hand, Liv," he said slowly and then drew his hand into a fist and let it fall at his side. "Maybe I'll call you, when I get to where I'm going."
And in the early-morning darkness it was Olivia's turn to play in her ashes because she knew that Elliot would never call because he was a nomad without destination.
13 hours after Elliot had offered to take her away from these moments of life that controlled her, she ordered dinner - take-out for one.
She sat in her apartment with a dull light and a plate of Chinese that came with one fortune cookie and one plastic knife and one plastic fork and one plastic spoon and one rough little rectangular white napkin.
The pieces of her that Elliot had not managed to take with him were bruised and resting uncomfortably within her, attached to Elliot's words, her life hanging from a string.
Tonite she wore a gold cross around her neck because everyone found their religion when they were so close to death that they could feel it's arms around them. Elliot had taken her excuses with him and she sat with her meal for one, her lonely moment of lies and she tried to ignore everything that she felt but would not let herself feel.
She sat in her gold cross in her one bedroom apartment and she gave her mind permission to fall open to the secrets it held in it's corners. She had loved without loving, loved him in the absence of being allowed to do such a thing, and at the moment that he had come to her, falling before her, she found control and she found safety and she had to not let him take her, regardless of it he had already unknowingly done so.
Suddenly Elliot's absence, and the words he left her with, the words that attacked and burrowed within her, pulling at her thoughts and the locks she's wrapped tight around the little regrets in her life, started to break and her body started to shake.
Everything that she had controlled so brilliantly was shattering in the absence of everything that she could have had and she needed Elliot to fix this, because he was the one who caused it to break. The glass would not have shattered if he did not nudge it from the end of the table, and now it lay on the floor in pieces.
This was the wreckage of her life after Elliot had blown through. These were her splintered pieces and she couldn't breath now because the lock had been cut and she was flooded with the life she never let herself live.
Every ghost that had ever graced her life controlled her, and the consequences of what she had now were nothing compared to those that she could have had.
She grabbed for the telephone without thinking, click it on and putting it to her ear to listen for the dial tone, but when she did so she heard his voice instead, she heard him coming through the phone, his greeting kissing her ears like fire dancers, and she jumped from the floor.
"Where the hell are you!" Everything in her mind was flying by, was moving in blurred traffic across her minds eye and she closed her eyes to be blinded to it, running her hands back through her hair because he had came through and scavenged through her life and left her tattered and tearing.
"Olivia? Are you okay?" He was scared because he could feel her tears riding on the waves of her words.
"Where are you, Elliot? Where the hell did you go?" She let the words play for him to interpret as he would like.
"Are you okay?" This was repetitive and this was fear and this was a love they were still too controlled to fully acknowledge. She knew that she loved him, but she didn't know if she loved him like she should or like she had to because of everything that they had been through together, time had bound their hearts with thorns and she didn't know the circumstances by which it had happened. "Answer me, damn it," he was furious because he was panicking with the absence of her words.
"You come in and you get me thinking, Elliot, you come in my home and my life and you take it and you make me look at everything and then you don't stick around to – to handle the consequences." She needed to steady her hands and her head and her heart, but her body shook and her body ached and at that moment she was dangerously aware of her own mortality.
"Are you okay?" He pushed the words out, strong and forceful.
"Where are you, Elliot? Where are you?" She didn't given him the dignity of an answer because he was the one who had ruined her while trying to build her and these were his ruins and he had to do this for him and now for her.
"I'm in Tannersville, South fucking Carolina, Olivia and I'm worried to hell about you! Are you okay? Would you give me an answer? That's all I want, an answer." But he lied because with his lack of control he wanted to believe in fairytales and castles and happy endings and he needed to be with her at that moment.
This morning he left her house and he got in his car and he drove after something that he wasn't sure of. Drove 10 hours until he couldn't drive anymore and now he was 30 miles from the ocean in a little motel for the simple fact that he could be – for the simple fact that he had the time and the ability and the lack of control.
"Are you looking at the ocean?" She was scared that she lost him.
"I asked you to come with me-"
"You shouldn't have to go anywhere!" She accused him, but she was running around collecting her jacket and bag and she stood at the door, the phone pressed to her ear, trying to feel him through their distant connection.
The miles between them were paved in guilt and he wanted to tell her the truth that he hadn't even found yet, the truth that was wrapped so tight around his feelings for her that they wouldn't let him convey anything to her clearly.
"I- I have to go, Elliot, I have to go."
"No, Olivia, wait, stay on the phone, Liv, Olivia, stay with me, talk to me, I'm sorry, Jesus," He was rambling, but he heard nothing on the other end, a click and silence and his life spiraling out of control because he took the time to go back and examine the possibilities of what could be instead of being satisfied by what was.
Sleep didn't come to him because his mind was running too fast, running through him and from him at the same time and he couldn't reconcile anything. He heard of people who would simply crack at a certain point, who would be sparked by something or someone and they would never be the same from that point on.
Elliot Stabler stood at the crossroad of a circle and he didn't know which way to go.
He set out driving because it cleared his head, and he continued driving for the simple fact that he could. He was free and he was lost and he had no destination. He wasn't allowed to love Olivia before and now there was nothing holding him back and he knew that he loved her but he knew that she couldn't and so he was sitting in a foreign town in an old motel and he was tasting the salt in his tears like that of the ocean, drinking it as he slipped below the surface.
This was an interlude; this moment would either link him to yesterday or build him a bridge to tomorrow and he felt his dreams sliding away from him, robbed from him by toy soldiers and he was trying to grab onto something before anything else could leave him – leave him scared and alone with only his doubt remaining.
Tonite he couldn't think, but he couldn't stop and he wouldn't let himself process anything as a regret because there were far too many – he stayed too long or left too soon, he loved too much or lost too little, and tonite he sat at a distance from everything familiar that would change his mind, he sat alone trying to figure out what he did want and what he didn't – he sat trying to figure out if he should go back to what he had or move forward to what he could.
The door shook with a forceful knock, pulling him from his tangled reverie, and he walked quickly, opening it slowly to see who it was before swinging it open upon recognition.
Before him Olivia stood, blanketed beneath the early morning sky, which had opened to let the rains down, and she stood with tears making trails down her cheeks, mixing with the rain to baptize her into this life.
"How?" His voice was gruff and torn.
"I'm a fucking detective, Elliot," she said simply, and he blinked to make sure the illusion wouldn't fade. "What is this, Elliot? What the hell are you doing? What are you trying to do!" She was sobbing because she was empty.
"Come in, it's pouring, Liv, come inside," he forced his voice to be soft.
"Answer me!" She was tired and running on adrenaline, having flown to Raleigh-Durham, the only red-eye flight she could find, and then having to drive the remaining few hours to where Elliot was hiding.
"I don't know, Liv, I just – I always wanted to just get in the car and drive, and I just did, I just – drove and this is where I ended up," his words were not excluded to their physical meaning.
"You're thinking about all those things you never did instead of all those things you did and look at where it brought you! You ruined me and you're ruined and – and Elliot I want to know why."
"I just – Jesus, Olivia – I see you, and I know that you want more, I know that you feel more and it's not okay for it to be all bottled up –"
"It has to be, Elliot, that's how this works, that's how you exist, that's how you wake up in the morning and make it through the day, the may be lies, but they write my story."
"I'm tired of pretending," his answer was short, and Olivia felt herself tighten as she realized that she had just walked in on the interlude of Elliot's life. She walked in on the silent moments between yesterday and today and she didn't know if she was strong enough to stay.
"I don't want to be your mid-life crisis, Elliot. I don't want to be what you think you want because you need a change at the moment, and I can't be what you leave behind when this is over and I can't be an interruption. You want a mid-life crisis, go buy a convertible or an overpriced new wardrobe."
This is the way his world ended, with a cry and a scream and the ocean in Olivia's eyes, the stinging salt water that burned as it swallowed him.
"You say that you want to ignore all the stuff inside of you, all the stuff I brought out in you last nite, but you knew it all along, Olivia. Look at you," he stepped out into the rain with her, "You came after me." He cocked his head to the side and gave her his smile.
"I can't be your mid-life crisis, Elliot," She turned away from him, the rain kissing her skin.
"Olivia," he stepped closer to her, pushing her hair back off of her face and looking her over slowly.
"Tell me I'm wrong, El, please," the last stitch of sanity was removed as Elliot rested his forehead to hers.
She shook as he ran his hands over her, letting them rest on her sides.
"Elliot," she breathed his name, and he closed his eyes, shutting her off to the blue in them and she started sobbing, crumbling and cracking and sobbing every emotion from her, but Elliot's hands held strong, "Please."
Elliot took a step back from her and swallowed hard at the realization that he didn't know how to do this.
"I don't want to be your mid-life crisis." The words tumbled from her lips one last time.