1The alarm clock does blare in my ear, a couple of hours later. I moan and throw a pillow over my ears. I don't want to get up. My apartment's icy cold and my bed's warm. I reach over and fumble blindly to find the snooze and shut the clock up, but don't move to get up. "Liv?" Elliot gently pulls the pillow off my head. "You know, we don't have to go in, today."
I roll my eyes at him. "Tempting, believe me, but, no. We've got two open murders, with one vic still a Jane Doe and no leads."
"So? Why get up if we don't have to? Huh? Cragen will call, if something's up."
My cell phone rings. Typical. He almost had me convinced that we really didn't have to go in, then reality had to come and crash the party. Damn it. I grope around on my bedside table, until I find the annoying device that I've considered throwing into the river more than once. I pick up. "Benson."
"I'm watching you, bitch." The voice is male and unfamiliar.
"Who the hell is this?" I demand, sitting bolt upright.
"I'm watching you." He repeats, then goes silent, the only sound on the line his breathing. I stay quiet, waiting for him to speak. In the background, I can hear traffic - engines running, horns blowing, even a police siren. He's on the street, somewhere. "Go into work - you'll find a surprise waiting for you."
"What? Who the hell"- I'm cut off, as he hangs up the phone and I finish my sentence to a dial tone.
"Liv?"
"I think our perp just called me. Sounds like from a payphone."
"Damn it!" Elliot grabs his jeans and his boxers and slips into both. "I'm gonna get Richards to radio in"-
"El, use a landline. For some reason, these guys always have scanners. Call Cragen, tell him to get the guys to check out around the house - he said there was a surprise waiting for me, at work." I catch his arm. "Actually, let me do it. I don't want the masses to show up and find out about this."
He nods and kisses my forehead. "It'd be worse for you, wouldn't it?"
"Un-huh." I grab the cordless and dial Cragen. I know he's at his desk, because he never goes home - the cot in his office proves it. He picks up on the second ring. "What?"
I brief him, explaining what happened, and he ends the call, about to send CSU our way. Elliot and I hop into a quick shower, change the bed and make it look like he slept in my spare room last night. I'm not ashamed of what we did - I just don't want the whole world knowing. That would be another dent that my reputation can't take. "Liv?" Elliot questions, as I run fingers through my wet hair.
"What?" It's cold, I'm wet and some sick psycho has my number. Yay. Isn't this a way to start the day?
"Everything's gonna be okay. I promise." He kisses the top of my head. "I'm not gonna let him hurt you."
"It doesn't matter about me. He's killed two women that we know of. How many more is he going to kill before we stop him? How many mothers is going to take away from their innocent kids? How many daughters is he gonna take from their parents? How many wives is he gonna take from their husbands? It's not about me."
Elliot shakes his head, as there's a knock on the door.
Two guys from TARU, the home of the computer geniuses that help us work our cases have arrived. They run a trace on my cell phone and place a wiretap on both my cell and my home phone, so if he should call me again, we'll have him. One of the guys looks at me. "Detective - do you have any idea where he was?"
"Outside. On the street - I could hear the traffic. Maybe a cell phone or a payphone. It sounded like a payphone - when someone hangs up a cell phone on you, all you hear is a click - you know what I mean? But when someone hangs up in a phone booth, you can hear the receiver go down."
"Okay. Your line at the precinct is tapped - we're good to go."
I nod, letting my partner show them back out. After they're gone, Elliot turns back to me. "You all right?" He reaches and brushes my hair off my forehead.
"Call me pathetic, but I need a hug." I look up at him, meeting his blue eyes. He slips both arms around me, one hand in my hair. We stay like that, for a while, with him rocking us, gently. He kisses my forehead and then releases me. I blink at him. I've never experienced this affectionate side of him. I've seen it, with Kathy and the kids, from time to time, but he's never directed it at me, and I have to admit, I like it. I like that he's seeing me as a woman, not just as a cop. I'm not just his partner, now.
I slip into my coat and toss him his. "Let's go."
We stop at a coffee shop around the block to get the caffeine boost we both need, then it's back to the traffic disaster that every movie and TV show ever set in New York City has to illustrate, including the millions of yellow taxicabs. I have to admit that the movies are pretty accurate - there are some nasty traffic jams around here. And right now, we're stuck in one.
Elliot's drumming his fingers on the wheel, absently. I'm just staring out the window. Thank God - we're moving. "You know, if you had let me drive"- I begin, only to have him roll his eyes at me. "You would have found some smart-assed shortcut, right?"
"Yeah. See, I live in this neighborhood. Pretty much grew up here. I know a bunch of side streets that would have gotten us out of this mess." He never lets me drive. It's a guy thing. Add that to the list of things about him that piss me off.
"Smartass." He grumbles, as we finally clear the backup.
"Oh, so now I'm the smartass?" I look at him, raising an eyebrow. "Call your sister."
"Why?"
"If you're gonna call me names, your ass isn't staying with me."
He grins and leans over from the seat, to kiss me, stopped in an intersection.
I push him away, gasping for breath. "Okay. That wasn't fair. But if you keep that up, maybe I will let you stay."
I see the smirk of satisfaction come across his face, as he navigates the narrow streets. There have been days when I've longed to wipe that damned smirk off his face. I also told him he should patent that look, once. He can be annoying as hell, with his attitude, when he wants to be. But something drew me to him.
When I first met him, I played the pissed-off girl, for six months. I didn't want to be around him and I didn't like him. In fact, I acted like I hated him and his attitude, but in truth, every time he touched me, my heart stopped, until I got control of myself. Pretending I hated his guts was my cover. And it worked - Cragen once pulled me in for a talk, to tell me that I didn't have to like the guy - we just had to do our jobs.
But now I can't imagine being without him. When we eat out, he just rolls his eyes at me, when I steal stuff off his plate and eat it, without asking him first. And he'll chase me, when he thinks I need him, when I'm too stubborn to admit it. When we fight, when he loses his temper, it never takes him long to apologize. I've seen him get his hands around a perp's throat, throw punches, but when he loses his temper with me, I trust him enough to know that he won't raise a hand to me.
I admitted it to myself a long time ago - I'm in love with him. But actually hearing him whisper it, before we both dropped off to sleep makes it seem more real. Knowing that he returns my feelings - it's a confusing mess, all right.
Right now, I'm not worried about what's going to happen, if this gets out - I'm in love. For real this time. When I was younger, I'd fall into anyone's open arms, a scared, crying, desperate little girl trapped in the shell of a grown woman's body. Unloved as a child, I looked for any kind of affection I could get, until I realized that I was being taken advantage of. They were just using me, exploiting my weakness. I don't think I heard a sincere 'I love you' until I was in my thirties.
A lot of people, namely shrinks, used to ask me why I was so desperate to be loved - hadn't my mother loved me? But they never got it. The bottle - the beer, the whiskey, the cheap wine and bourbon - they were her world. She couldn't stand me because I reminded her of my father. She couldn't bear to see me, as a child, because I was happy, full of life, and she was living in pain. She wasn't the loving mother I grew up watching in the movies and on TV. I had no idea what a real parent was supposed to be.
When I got my heart broken, like teenage girls do, she didn't offer me a hug and a box of tissues, then sit with me and come up with ways to trash the guy. She'd just pour herself another drink and tell me that whatever the hell had happened to me, it wasn't worth crying over. I didn't know what pain was. I couldn't possibly know what pain was, at my age. She did.
But while she lived in the bottle, I was suffering. She never wanted me in the first place, so she didn't feel any obligation to love me. When I left home, I was lonely and desperate. My first night on my own, I met a guy, who I swore up and down was going to be the man of my dreams - until he crawled out of bed and disappeared the next morning.
It went like that for me - guys taking advantage of me to get what they wanted - all through college, the Academy and through my first few years on the job. I was fine with it, for a while, then a friend of mine got married and she and her husband were so much in love, you could feel it. I knew what I was looking for, after that - not casual one-night-stands. I wanted someone to stand by me, no matter what, come hell or high water. Someone who would love me no matter what.
Unfortunately, I haven't found the true man of my dreams - until now. I trade a smile with Elliot. Something always drew me to the kind of stability he offers - a shrink once told me that my desire for stability probably came from an unstable childhood - I'm trying to make up for it. Yeah. My childhood was pretty damned unstable, all right. I never knew what the hell I was going to walk into, when I came home - an empty apartment, Mom on a binge, Mom passed out on the floor or Mom bent over the toilet. I never understood why she drank - it just made her miserable. If I tried to talk about it with her, she'd ignore me and pour herself another glass.
Just before I got my promotion to detective, it hit me; I was just repeating the cycle. There were so many men in and out of my mother's life, I lost track, over the years. They were just using her because she was there. That put a stop to the casual one-night-stands, that thought. I didn't want to be used. I don't even remember the number of boyfriends she had when I was a kid, but I know there were more than a few. What my father did to her left her hopeless and desperate, drowning in her own pain, as she spiraled out of control and slipped further and further away from me.
That's why I took this job. To help. Because I couldn't do anything for her, I needed to help someone else. I couldn't do anything for her, being just a child, but I wasn't the only one who was powerless, watching her slip like that. My grandparents, Sandy and Charlie all tried to help her, throw her a lifeline, get her out of that black hole, but no one could reach her.
It's always bothered me that she died, drunk, cold and alone. But it's the alone part that bothers me the most. When she was sober, my mother had a beautiful personality - she was smart and she had a sense of humor. If she'd been able to drag herself out of that hole, she might have been able to be happy.
That same thought used to scare me, at nights. I used to be terrified that I was sinking the same way she had. That I was letting this job, the victims and the kids get to me and I was letting it pull me down, suck me dry, and stop my life. I was scared that I was getting too involved. I was scared that I was never going to be happy because of this job. But, now I see things differently. A hell of a lot differently.
