For All of This;
One.
She opened the door as if she knew that he were on the other side, slow and cautious, planting herself between the opening and the rest of her apartment, not willing to let him in.
This was her world, this is what he gave her.
"Think I moved?" If he could look her in the eye he would have noticed that they were glassy, and if he could let himself look her over he would have noticed that her cheeks were flushed, her legs that of a sailor, shaky and bent slightly in an effort to hold herself up.
"What?" He wondered why she was standing wedged between the door and the wall, blocking his entry and view, and for a moment jealousy ran fresh and cold through his veins.
"Been a while since you've been here." She cleared her throat and straightened up and walked out into the hallway, shutting the door closed behind her before leaning up against it.
"Liv," he started, but she shook her head no.
"Olivia." She said loudly and widened her eyes. Even in the haze she had she knew that he wasn't allowed to be that close anymore.
"Look, Olivia," he was mad now, taking a step back and fumbling around with his hands because he did not know what to do with them. For an instant he felt like they were going back to the start, but this time he carried with him sin that she did not look ready to forgive. "I know that case today was rough on you, the little girl –"
"I'm fine." She didn't want to listen to his words because they were just soft formations with no meaning. No feeling. Regardless of what they were Olivia could only feel the unrest, she could only hear their loss.
"What do you want from me? Tell me and I'll try to do it." He was willing to try to put humpty dumpty back together again, but Olivia gave him an ironic smile. At a certain point she promised herself not to let this happen to her anymore, not to be someone's anytime, someone who waited around for when the other person they needed needed them, too.
She pressed the heal of her hands to her eyes, hard and strong until when she removed them she could only see black and a few carefully placed dots of light.
"You already did it."
"Olivia, c'mon. You know that this is hard, all this other stuff, and I'm just trying to figure it all out, you know that. Olivia, you know that." His repetition annoyed her because she didn't know that. She didn't know anything. "You're my partner. You're my friend," he paused for a minute to let her hang on the words, "are you listening to me?" His eyebrows came together as Olivia turned around to the door, her head falling back as she turned the doorknob.
"Fuck!" She kicked the door with the side of her foot and then turned back to Elliot, the light in her eyes come through in the tiled colors scattered throughout.
"You locked yourself out?" He looked her over cautiously, the air between them stale, and Olivia put one hand on her hip, the other going up to run through her hair.
"Thank you, Detective Stabler."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Elliot took a step towards her, the lucidity of her words concerning him.
She didn't answer with "you", although she wanted to, but instead she bit down on her bottom lip, trying to figure out how she was going to get out of this.
"Breath on me." He looked her up and down, dressed in a grey tank top and black cotton pants. She had not been out, and yet, she was not there with him either, when he forced his eyes to connect with hers he did not see the milky way, he wasn't traveling past Mars, but rather he was drowning in what she may have done. "Have you been drinking? Are you drinking again?"
Again. He spoke like he understood, like he knew there was a before, but he didn't, and Olivia wanted to tell him that anything he had seen was nothing. What she did was in silence. It was in her one bedroom apartment with food and plates and silverware for one. What she did was by herself, because that's all that she was anymore.
"Move." He pushed her aside and reached into his pocket for his keys, he ran over the different ones on the ring before finding hers and unlocking the door. "Olivia!" He said her name strong, strict, like a father calling his child back from the rough tides of the ocean. "Don't do this. Don't." He scolded her, and she wanted to tell him that he had no right, but on the counter sat an unfinished glass of rum and diet that was fogging out the situation, that was over coming him and her and what they no longer had.
She needed to take a drink because when he said that they were still friends, he did not include the word best as an adjective. She had fallen from this and from him and she didn't think that one more fall would matter all that much.
"Elliot," she paused for a minute to look over her mistake, and she didn't know she was crying until she tasted the mixture of alcohol on her tongue, salt and rum and whiskey and beer, "we work together."
Olivia was supposed to protect him, take a bullet for him, put herself in the line of fire, and in those three words, she did the exact opposite. In those three words, in all the 10,000 words they left unsaid, in all the million pictures that they left unpainted, Elliot could feel what she was telling him. He was like everyone else with a badge and a gun and a childhood fantasy that they could save the world.
"You're my partner." The words we strong, and Olivia was hoping for all the ones he hadn't spoken.
"I'm your 9 to 5. I walked in one day and you needed a partner. We were assigned to each other. That's all." Her words faltered, she stumbled upon them and over them as they came crashing from her lips, more destructive than a gun, a bullet, a knife. They were a single shot, straight and to the point.
"You know that's not true." Olivia stepped back into her apartment, her back facing her world of empty bottles and broken bottle caps.
"You didn't come to me. You didn't talk to me. You didn't tell me. That's not a friend, that's an inconvenience." She stopped, not telling him that she, more than anyone, knew what it was like to be an inconvenience. The feeling was not new or unique, it was something that came back to her with the same force each time, that feeling that makes your stomach drop, your hands itch. It is the moment at which you realize that those you hold valuable do not return to sentiment, it is in the moment in which you realize that your words are nothing but jumbled syllables falling on the deaf ears of those who mean the most to you.
Olivia Benson, with each of her finely placed scars, knew what it was like to be an inconvenience. Better off silent. Better off drowning. Better off with her self&medication.
Elliot was not the first, but with his blue eyes lost against the sea of his face, she knew that he would be the last.
"I'll see you tomorrow. At the station." Her words were clear, and Elliot shook his head, not about to accept this drunken rendition of what their lives had become. Her eyes were full of whiskey dreams and glassed over from the vodka and he was scared because at this point he didn't know what to do.
He stood there for three minutes, his mouth twisted and ready to form words, but he couldn't. His jaw clamped down, and he shook his head with frustration.
"You know you shouldn't be doing this," was all he could manage to say, and Olivia wanted to tell him that he should abide by his own advice.
"You know this isn't your place to tell me what to do," and with Olivia's pause Elliot pushed the door open, and startled, Olivia jumped back, watching him run to the glass that sat on the counter.
"Are you kidding me?" He turned to her when he saw the sink, filled with empty bottles that traced Olivia's path to where she now stood.
"They're from the past month or two. I just haven't taken them out," she lied.
He could feel the veins of his neck fill and push against the tight skin that contained them, he could feel his heart pounding against his ribs for freedom, and in his right hand he picked up a bottle of Absolut Vanilla Vodka, held it at her accusingly, and then, her eyes meeting his, unable to comprehend this situation, he realized that the bottle was heavy, too much, and he let it fall from his hand, the top of the bottle breaking off and shattering as it hit the kitchen floor and the rest staying intact as it rolled back and forth like a pin just assaulted by a bowling ball.
He couldn't handle this moment, although he knew that he had to. If he was going to prove anything to her he had to remain here and get an answer.
"How long has this been going on?" Olivia didn't answer him, she walked to the kitchen floor and collected the glass pieces of the bottle, not caring that they were scraping at her palm, her blood showing the tiny scars. "Stop, Olivia, what the hell are you doing? You're bleeding." Elliot bent down to where she was crouched down on the floor and grabbed her wrist before turning her hand over, the glass falling from it.
"I'm fine." Her eyes challenged him, fueled by the liquid courage that pushed everything inside of her to a dull ache. "Elliot," she had to get him out of there, "I'm sorry about Kathy. I could have done…ya know." She shrugged, and Elliot's eyes lighted, his heart retreating for a moment.
"Thanks, Liv." He gave her a soft smile and then the two stood slowly.
She had to get him out of there, and with a lie and a smile he would believe that she was okay and this was just a bad day because she knew that at this moment he wanted to.
"I should go, I guess." She didn't stop him, and with her nod as confirmation he headed towards the door.
&&&&&
"Elliot?" Cragen looked to the man before him with confused eyes, and Elliot gave him a faint smile.
"Can I talk to you for a minute? Do you have time?" For some reason Elliot seemed hesitant, soft, scared, and Cragen gave Elliot a nod, pushing his chair out a little ways from his desk and then motioning for Elliot to sit down.
"I though you'd left. Olivia's been gone for at least a few hours." He ran his hands over his tired face and then leaned back in his chair, looking to Elliot expectantly.
"Have you noticed anything off about Olivia lately?" Elliot did not look at him when he talked, the guilt hung like a weight around his neck, pulling his eyes to the floor.
"No." Cragen's answer came quickly after Elliot's question.
"Maybe not so much her work, maybe just how she's been acting? Has she been short with you? Anything like that?" He was fishing for something because he couldn't reconcile the scene from last nite as it played continuously in the corners of his mind.
"Elliot, what's going on? It seems like you're looking for something specific, like you want an exact answer here. Is everything okay? How are things going at home?" He realized there were boundaries, but he also knew there was a gun strapped to Elliot's belt and in the middle of the night the dark silence screamed.
"I'm," he knew there wasn't a right word to explain his state, he wasn't fine, he wasn't bad, uncertain, maybe, but he knew Cragen wanted something more than that, "okay. You know, you just do it, but, Olivia, anything? You see anything off?"
"Elliot, if you tell me what you're talking about, maybe I can help you out more. But as far as anything else goes, no, Olivia's been fine. Hasn't said anything to me, hasn't had any unusual behavior." With the answer he didn't want Elliot pushed himself up from the chair, kicking it out from underneath him. "Elliot," Cragen started, moving out from around his desk to face Elliot. "Something you want to talk about? You worried about something?"
"She's different." He muttered the words, and he felt their burden because he was the only one who knew them.
"Elliot!" Cragen called to his retreating form, but it was no use, he was gone.
&&&&&
He rubbed the spot on his finger where his wedding ring used to be as she approached him, her steps short and hurried, and she stopped beside him, leaning down to his ear to softly speak her intentions, "What the hell?"
"What?" His head turned to her quickly, his eyes searching her face for a resolution. Olivia did not answer his question, but she turned and headed towards the crash rom, Elliot knowing that her intention was for him to follow her, and he did so quickly, chasing after her rushed steps before finding himself in the room alone with her.
Before she spoke she shut the door, turned to him, her face red from frustration and anger, and she moved at him quickly.
"You talked to Cragen? About what? What the fuck are you doing, Elliot? What right do you have?" She demanded an answer, and Elliot grabbed her wrist, moving her finger out of his face.
"Don't act like there is nothing wrong," he challenged her.
"Don't act like I'm what's wrong, Elliot!" She growled his name, her breaths coming short and quick.
"Olivia, I'm worried about the other nite, about what was going on –"
"No, no, Elliot, you gave that up. You're so damn self involved, and I get it, I get what happened and I get it was hard, but I was there! I was there and you never fucking noticed, never gave me a second, a minute, nothing. But now you see something and you think it's your job to come in and save me?"
"Olivia, that's not, that isn't –" he knew she was right, but at the same time, he couldn't let her do this so easily. She was trying to let him go.
"Newsflash, Elliot Stabler, I don't need to be saved, especially by you." And with that she turned around, making her way to the door, and Elliot ran at her, pounding his hand against the door before she could open it, and he grabbed her arm, spinning her around to face him.
Her arm was pounding from the imprints left behind from his hand, and she looked him over like some stranger, some suspect, the man who had stolen everything she once knew and left her naked and alone with nothing to call her own. She understood his problems, but what she did not understand was the moment at which she became one of them.
"I know you, and I know something's up, I know this is turning into something, that it can, there's a line, Olivia, a fine line, and you know that."
"You don't know me, Elliot, that was just something we made ourselves believe because we had to reconcile dying for one another without ever really feeling that way." He felt every word of her statement, and they pushed him back as if he had just been hit full force. "See, Elliot," she was walking at him, "when something happens, something that we should be there for, we're not. You leave. You back away. I'm a burden. This friendship, is a burden. Doesn't take much to see that." She explained their lives to him, and he shook his head, his hands coming together so that he would not hit her.
"You don't get it, Olivia, you don't understand, and I'm not asking you to, but Jesus –"
"Hit me," she challenged, "I know you want to, so do us both the favor." She needed the physical scar.
"I'm not touching you," he breathed.
"You being a hero isn't going to save anything. You being so goddamn self righteous is going to do shit," she explained with wide eyes, "so, hit me. Do it."
His hand flew up, fingers curled into a fist, and with his arm over his head he watched her, watched everything he thought he had go to hell with everything she wouldn't let him do.
For a moment fear flashed in her eyes, not because of his lingering hand, suspended and waiting to make contact with her, but because this meant that he had really gone, the fact that he didn't know, that he didn't understand, that he thought it had not yet begun.
This was the moment at which she realized that she had lost him, and without his fist ever touching her, she felt the pain of a crippling blow.
Elliot's hand flew past her head and into the door behind her, his knuckles fighting against the thick wood for ground, and shoving tiny splinters into his skin.
When his hand moves back past her head, his knuckles starting to show the signs of blood and bruising, Olivia has bitten her lip so hard that there is blood, salty and forgiving, coming into her mouth. She licked it away with her tongue, and for a moment her eyes stood juxtaposed against Elliot's, all the darkness and deep brown freckles in them challenging the light blues of his own mosaics.
"You missed," she said, her voice faltering, and when she slammed the door behind her, Elliot knew that it was more symbolic, more detailed and said more than their words ever could.
It was over.
They were over.
&&&&
tbc.