Look At Tomorrow
She's happy to see him at her door, and even happier to see what he's got in his hands.
"I thought we could celebrate," he says, offering her the paper bag. "Two years, you know."
"That's not till next week," she informs him, but takes the chocolate ice cream out of the bag anyway.
"Nothing wrong with celebrating early," he says, recovering quickly.
"Not that I don't love chocolate ice cream," she says, "but is this seriously your idea of a celebration?"
"Nah," he says, a lazy smile spreading over his face, "this is just for starters."
"I could work with that," she throws over her shoulder, heading to the kitchen for spoons. She grabs the necessary utensils and returns to see him making himself comfortable on her couch. "Making me do all the work, huh?" she teases.
"I'm just conserving my energy," he tells her innocently. "Wouldn't want me to fall asleep by eight, now would you?"
"When have you ever fallen asleep by eight?"
He has to concede the point. "Maybe when my kids were babies. You learn to have very flexible sleeping habits."
She scoops ice cream into their respective bowls. "A talent that would serve us all well," she points out. "I mean, much as I love being called at four in the morning, you gotta sleep sometime."
"Maybe SVU detectives should try being nocturnal," he muses.
She laughs. "Like that would help."
"Hey, I'm just offering suggestions here!" he defends himself.
"Stabler?"
"Oh, pulling out the last names now, are we?"
"Just shut up and eat your ice cream."
He sighs. "Yes ma'am."
"Now that's the kind of respect I like to see," she says in mock seriousness, taking a bite of her own dessert. He turns his attention to his bowl as well, and several minutes pass in the comfortable quiet that comes from knowing someone's soul.
"D'ya ever wonder," he says conversationally, licking the last of his ice cream from his spoon, "what would've happened if we'd stayed partners?"
"Sometimes," she says. "You mean, besides spontaneously combusting from sexual frustration?"
He laughs. "Yeah. Besides that."
"I don't know, Elliot," she says, chewing on her lower lip. She does wonder. "We would've gone on like we had, I guess. Stepping around everything." She gets up to take her dishes to the kitchen, and he follows.
"Liv."
"What?" she asks, annoyed at the way he's standing in her path.
"Don't we do that now anyway?"
She sighs. "El, let's not start this conversation now. It's a celebration."
"I just…what are we celebrating, Olivia, really? What are we?"
"Do we have to name it?" she asks. "We just…we just are."
"I think we need to talk," he tells her, leveling his gaze with her own.
She looks at the floor, knowing that he's probably right. "Yeah. But not tonight, okay? Tonight," she continues, giving his tie a playful tug, "you're far too dressed for the occasion."
"Not tonight," he agrees, allowing her mouth to capture his own. "All right."
…
He calls her three days later, and she doesn't approve of the way her heart hammers at the ring. She's never been good at this sort of thing, and she's beginning to resent him for pushing the issue. Of course she wants to be with him; that had never been the question. She just wishes he would let things be. Perhaps it was hypocritical, after all the times she'd pushed him to open up, but then she had never pushed him to open up about her. This was too close. Suddenly she's angry: she doesn't want him peering into her heart. Doesn't want him breaking through her locked doors.
She takes the phone into her bedroom, where she can curl up and look out the window. Late September brings bare branches scraping against her window, and she wonders why she ever loved the fall. "Hello," she says, her tone a little questioning. It could be anyone, after all, even though she knows it could only be him.
"Hey," he says, and she's amazed at how his voice can still make her melt, even now that she's hardened as much as she has.
"So," she begins, and they both laugh nervously. A thousand silent words race over the line.
"I miss you, Liv," he says.
She thought she had prepared for anything, but she's taken aback by this. "What? We just saw each other three days ago."
He sighs audibly over the phone, and she can picture him running a hand over what was left of his hair. "That's not what I mean."
"Would you kindly explain what you do mean, then, 'cause you're confusing the hell out of me."
Silence hangs heavily over their heads. "You haven't…been around. I mean," he continues, stifling her sputtered protests, "mentally or emotionally or something, because something just isn't there."
"I don't really know what you're talking about," she says stiffly, masking the lump in her throat.
"That's sort of the point, then, isn't it."
"I hate it when you're cryptic like this."
"We aren't connecting, Liv," he says quietly.
"What do you mean we're not connecting? We connect fine, as I recall." She knows by the pause on the line that she shouldn't have made a joke. Not tonight.
He swallows. "I don't know you anymore."
"Oh," she says simply, allowing the word to dangle in the air.
"And I miss you," he says again.
"What do you want to do about it?" she asks quietly.
"I don't know," he says. "But there's one thing I need to know…I need to know whether or not you even want to be with me anymore." His voice holds exhaustion and frustration and the tiniest note of fear.
"Of course I do," she says.
"Then why are you backing away?"
"I'm not," she says, her anger nearly palpable.
"You are," he tells her. "As long as I've known you, Olivia, you have never gotten close to anyone. Not like this."
She grips the phone tightly. "I can't, Elliot. The job –"
"It's not the job and you know it."
"Well then, why don't you enlighten me? You seem to know everything."
"Olivia," he says, and the patience in his voice makes her want to scream. "I am not going to hurt you. I'm not your mother, I'm not using you, and I'm not going to walk away without a fight."
"But you would walk away," she says, her words emotionless.
"Is that all you got from that?" he says incredulously.
"You would walk away," she repeats. This is why she locks her heart.
"You seem to want that," he says, a little bitterly now.
"I don't."
"Would you tell me what you do want?"
"I want you to leave things be. Just -"
"I can't do that, Liv."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because this doesn't feel right! We were closer when we were partners than we are now! Christ, Olivia, I could spend the rest of my life with you, but I can't even be around you when you won't let me in."
"Maybe you shouldn't be around me then."
His breath catches in his throat. He hadn't meant this to happen. "Liv, c'mon. That's not what I meant."
"No," she says slowly, "but it's what I mean." She clicks the phone off and places it gently beside her bed. It rings insistently for several minutes, but she doesn't pick it up. She watches it steadily, waiting for the tears to come, and hating herself when they do.
…
He finally gives up pressing redial, choosing instead to stare incredulously at the phone in his hand. This was it, what had been simmering for weeks, months – hell, he didn't even know anymore. She was scared, yeah, but wasn't he just as terrified? He was running blind here, and managed to run straight into a ditch. He groans audibly and heads for the shower. He's still too shell-shocked to think about this any further.
…
Her clock reads three a.m. Maybe it's wrong? She pads to the kitchen: 3:01. Damn. She flops onto the couch, suddenly too exhausted to make it into her bedroom. She knows she isn't going to sleep. Why did he have to push so hard? She's never been one for self-analysis, and doesn't appreciate his comments about getting close running through her head. They were perfectly close. What good would a heart-to-heart or whatever stubborn idea he had do? She has never been one for relying on someone else. Some lessons you don't forget.
…
"Bad night?" asks Cragen when she drags herself through the doors in the morning.
"Yeah," she says, leaving him waiting for an elaboration.
Aaron looks up when she thumps into her chair. "Bad night?" She fixes him with a fierce glare, and he quickly ducks his head to peer intently at his paperwork. Apparently so.
She must look awful to be attracting all this attention. She'd tried to attend to the shadows on her face in her bathroom that morning, but she couldn't magically erase the bags under her eyes.
"Benson and Galluch," calls Cragen. She still hasn't quite gotten used to the uneven cadence of the pairing. "We got a hospital patient, just regained consciousness, says she was raped."
"Got it," says Olivia, grabbing her coat. Aaron follows her steps a little warily.
Five minutes of stony silence in the car and Aaron can bear it no longer. "So d'ya wanna talk about it or what?"
She is about to snap at him, but when she sees his expression she softens. He's just a kid, after all. A married kid with two children, but a kid nonetheless. "Talking's kinda the problem, actually," she says, relenting.
"Ah," he says with a nod. "Relationship troubles?"
"You could say that," she says, slowing down for a light that she's just noticed is red.
"Your ex-partner, right?" he asks, and she's so startled that the car behind her honks to get her moving forward again.
"How'd you know that?"
He shrugs. "Things get around," he tells her, focusing on the road.
"Yeah," she says, sighing suddenly. "Ex-partner. Ex-boyfriend, too, actually." The syllables clang cruelly in her mouth. Ex.
"Oh."
She laughs harshly. "Yeah. Oh." They park in the hospital lot and she concentrates on not slamming her car door. If there's one thing that she has learned in her life, it is control.
…
"Someone's got a bug up their butt," observes Rick, earning a glare from his partner that could send small children fleeing in terror.
"I am fine," Elliot pronounces. "What've we got?"
"Nasty head wound," says Rick, clearing away the remnants of what looked to have been quite the party so that Elliot could squat next to him. "No other obvious assault. Found with a needle still in her arm; that's why we got called."
"Weapon?"
"Rock. Already bagged it."
"How'd you get here so fast? It's two in the fucking morning."
"Boy Scout," says Rick. "Always prepared."
Elliot rolls his eyes. "How nice for you."
"What, the call interrupt an, um, relaxing evening?" asks Rick, a slight smirk on his face.
"No," says Elliot icily, "not that it's any of your business."
Rick raises his eyebrows. "All right, all right." Women problems. He knew how that went.
…
Hey Olivia. You wanna talk? He shakes his head. No good. She wasn't likely to want to talk to him. A letter, then, just a casual note to say he was thinking of her. Or an e-mail? E-mail was a little less personal. But then maybe that would be a negative, and besides, it was much too fast. He'd prefer something bouncing around the US Postal Service for a little while. Give the words time to…settle.
Oh, God. He was officially losing it.
Hey, Liv –
No, scratch that. Too jaunty.
Olivia –
Too formal. He may as well write To Whom It May Concern.
Dear Olivia –
He knows instinctively the truth of this, even if he won't ever write it down. Dear Olivia –
…
She paces her apartment, wishing for the first time that it was larger. She's getting sick of staring at the same length of carpet.
Listen, El –
No, she couldn't say El. She's lost that privilege.
Hey, Elliot, I was wondering if we could talk –
Like he'd want to talk to her? Now? Best not to say that up front.
Elliot.
Maybe that was best. Just Elliot. She can already hear her voice sliding over the familiar vowels. He has always been just Elliot, after all, and she has always loved this about him.
…
She shifts from foot to foot, suddenly cold, and reaches out to knock on his door. She pulls back as if she's been burned, then realizes how ridiculous she must look to anyone who cared to glance down the hall, and her hands darts out of its own accord and knocks once, twice, on Elliot's door.
"Olivia," he says in surprise when he pulls it open, though she knows he must have seen her through the peephole, and she realizes just how much she has missed her name in his mouth.
"Hi," she says, suddenly feeling like the greatest idiot ever to walk on two legs. "I – I should go," she says, turning away.
"Still running?" It isn't a challenge, merely a weary question. She has always been running, and she knows with startling clarity that the only way she wants to run is towards him.
"No," she says, almost defiantly.
"Come in," he says, holding his door wide and looking at her curiously. She steps through, nervous again. "Want a drink?"
"No thanks."
"Okay." He shrugs and moves towards his couch, motioning her to follow. She sits cautiously on the edge of the cushion, and even though she has resolved to stay, she looks at though any moment she will burst into flight. "Let's not beat around the bush," he says, a phrase he's never fully understood, and she nods. "Why are you here?"
"Because," she says, "I'm not going to give up without a fight."
He smiles, the first time he's done so in days. "When did you decide that?" He realizes belatedly that perhaps that's a stupid thing to say, under the circumstances, but she doesn't seem to notice.
"It's just…I woke up this morning, and I realized that I didn't want to have to look at tomorrow." She meets his eyes, and perhaps for the first time in her life, allows herself to truly fall. For the first time in her life, she will allow someone else to catch her. "Not if I didn't see you there."
(tbc)