A/N: Welcome to my new story! I really missed writing darker, angstier stuff, and I feel like this one is the perfect counterpart to "Cold, Cold Heart" in that sense. Please let me know if you think this one is intriguing enough and worth pursuing further!
Special thanks to my beta awildmind who had no idea what she was getting herself into, AllintheEyes and LivBensonStabler for giving this chapter a sanity-check reading when I wasn't sure it made sense outside of my crazy head, and EvaMariposa16 on twitter for the beautiful cover image(s).
1 - NEW NORMAL
The sharp, colorful lights were fighting the dark, reflecting on his eyes and turning them into two blue beams projected almost continuously on her skin while she kept close by, too aware of her short, tight clothes, heavy make-up, and the sound of dangling metal hanging from her ears over the country music coming from the speakers.
Everything around was supposed to remind her, but still, it was quite an effort for Olivia to keep in mind that this was a world of pretend while it seeped unceremoniously through her every layer, effortlessly installing like an operating system, becoming the new normal in the background of her mind. New normal was what her life was all about these days — especially in the last few.
Not very much was going on, which apparently was not unusual for an ordinary Tuesday night. The place was nearly empty, but for one of their regulars who sat at the bar exchanging the occasional grunt with Elliot between refills, and a few lone drinkers whose tables probably saw them more often than their wives did.
Olivia was waiting for any of them to make a sign that they needed anything, but they all sat perfectly quiet, the smoke of their cigarettes the only movement coming from their direction as it lifted and faded into the still air.
She knew Elliot was supposed to be staring at her like that, but such intel didn't stop the chills from traveling down her spine and her stomach from fluttering in response. Her peripheral vision caught it when the man sitting at the counter's stare followed his to find her, but she pretended to be completely oblivious while she moved towards the bar with both pairs of eyes weighing down on her.
"Hey," she purred as she approached Elliot from behind, her fingers skimming the whole length of his bulky arm before her hand settled on his shoulder, her mouth ghosting over the back of his neck. She kissed the skin softly. "I'm bored."
He smirked at the customer sitting across from him while Olivia noticed the man's eyes ogling her body, measuring every inch. Elliot's hand reached behind him and gripped at her bare waist below her cropped top and above her low-cut shorts.
"Baby, I'm working," he rumbled, but his thumb disagreed, sinking into the skin of her stomach as she reached his ear, her lips nibbling at his earlobe. His voice lowered in pitch. "Go check on the tables."
"They're all empty," she whined, snaking her other hand up his chest, her fingertips brushing lightly at the skin exposed by the opening in his flannel shirt before sliding all the way down, past his belt as she cautiously hooked her thumb into the front pocket of his jeans. She smiled inwardly as he fidgeted — you can't fake that kind of reaction.
"Not all of them," he turned his head in her direction, briefly making eye contact, then turned back to the customer, almost apologetic. "She's impossible."
The bearded man smiled, looking like he was enjoying the show with a cigarette trapped between his index and middle finger as his hand clutched the tumbler in the air, unmoving in its path between the mahogany and his mouth.
"You gotta keep 'em satisfied," he said, finally taking the glass to his lips, his eyes never faltering from Olivia, glued to her even through the translucent, caramel-colored liquid.
She decided to take it up a notch, flicking her tongue over Elliot's neck, the smell of aftershave and cologne blending seamlessly with the salty taste of sweat. She felt him shudder slightly and closed her eyes, wishing they were somewhere else entirely.
"You got that right," Elliot grinned at the man a moment later, turning around in a swift motion and pulling Olivia to him with both hands firmly clasped on her ass.
His lips burned against hers, but his tongue was cold, still mimicking the beer he'd been sipping just before. He wasted no time, raising a hand to cup the back of her head for leverage as he deepened the kiss with confident strokes that drove her lightheaded. To finish the job, he nudged his knee between her legs, letting his thigh stroke her lightly and making her lose her footing for a second. She shifted her weight so it would seem like a mere balance issue, even though she knew he knew better.
You can't fake that kind of reaction.
The hand he still had on her backside gave her a tight squeeze before his mouth left hers. It took her a second to be able to open her eyes again, and when she did, his were waiting for her, alight with that particular shade of fire that burns blue.
"Now go," he directed, his hand lazily sliding up from her ass to her back before withdrawing completely. "We'll finish this conversation later."
Olivia swallowed hard at the innuendo in his voice, thanking the heavens she was supposed to look just as breathless as she did, just as infatuated as she felt.
"I'll hold you to that," she exhaled, running a hand through her hair and throwing a glance at the bearded man who still eyed her shamelessly, seeming like he was stopping short of letting drool pour from the corner of his mouth.
She grabbed her previously-abandoned notepad and pen and walked away, not looking back but leaving behind the sway of her hips that she knew both men were examining carefully as she sauntered between the tables, offering to take any orders.
"Feeling hungry tonight, daddy?" she tilted her head to the side with a smile as the old man sitting at the last occupied table let his eyes wander up and down her figure.
"I could eat," he smiled, beer in hand. "What do you recommend, honey?"
Olivia grasped the napkin holder in front of him with her slender fingers and long, fiberglass nails and turned it around, revealing a small list of options. "Did you get a chance to look at the specials?"
While the man momentarily looked down and away from her to check it out, Olivia used the opportunity to throw a tentative glance toward Elliot, and he was standing there, immobile, observing her every move with those smoldering eyes, so intensely that she had to look away even as her lower lip got caught under her front teeth.
"I was hoping you'd be one of the specials," the man answered quite boldly. Now Olivia looked pointedly at Elliot, and he must have understood the message as his eyes moved to the man instead of her for a second.
"Sorry, sir," she smiled innocently, then angled her chin toward the bar. "I don't think my boyfriend would like that very much. I'll bring you the menu, though, so you can see all your options."
"Thanks, doll," the man nodded, then pointed at his long-necked bottle, already emptied by two thirds, and spoke with a crooked smile, looking eager to see her walk away. "Bring me another one of these, too, would ya?"
"Of course, coming right up."
She rolled her eyes as she turned, feeling a tinge of excitement course through her at the words my boyfriend that still echoed in her head, while Elliot's teeth still echoed on her lips where he'd lightly sunk them down. She bit her own lip again, but it wasn't the same, and it did nothing to erase the feeling of his mouth fusing with hers.
In her haze, it almost escaped her — the slender silhouette of a man moving slowly to a table in the furthest corner from where she stood, his haphazard walk just as distinctive as the look in his round, brown eyes. When they landed on her, even from afar, she couldn't avoid her shivering surprise as she recognized the man who had just walked in.
Her father.
ONE WEEK EARLIER
Olivia slept through the alarm that morning. She woke up wondering where she was and when — is it Saturday? It wasn't. When she realized it was already almost 8AM on an ordinary Tuesday morning, she rushed to shower and get dressed, forgoing any ideas of breakfast.
It was just a Tuesday, and this was her apartment, and this was supposed to be her reality… But everything still felt so foreign. She'd been struggling a little since she'd gotten back from Oregon. As much as she had dreamed of coming back to her life in New York the whole time she'd been away, that didn't mean her return was seamless.
Work had been the first clue of the impact of six weeks undercover without any contact. Obviously, the perps hadn't decided to take any time off just because she was working an undercover assignment for the FBI, and similarly, the Manhattan Special Victims Unit had continued its operations without her, business as usual. Her desk hadn't been left void for very long either — some woman named Dani Beck had filled in for her so the team wouldn't be incomplete.
So he wouldn't have to work alone.
But she was gone now, and Olivia had her job back, her partner back, her desk back. Not that it made the traces go away — the traces of someone else having sat on her chair, the stray items she had left behind in her departure, like a couple packets of gum in Olivia's drawer, a defective key on her keyboard, and her partner's newfound love for casual clothes.
But the woman was gone now, and Olivia needed to focus on that.
It was quite evident that something had happened between this Dani Beck and Elliot — something he wasn't eager to disclose to Olivia and, frankly, she wasn't eager to discover. She knew she wasn't going to like whatever it was. Just knowing she had sat across from him in the squad room and next to him in the car during stakeouts already bothered her enough.
Even the most basic things weren't easy to get used to after coming home, like her clothes: many of them seemed so unfamiliar to her that she had to struggle to remember when she'd bought them. Or her bedroom — she'd grown so used to sleeping in couches and makeshift beds while she'd been under that her bed was suddenly a bit too comfortable. There was too much space, too much silence, and too many thoughts in her head to keep her awake for hours on end.
And so, some mornings it was difficult for her to wake up. Some mornings, she didn't know where she was, if she was really Olivia again or if she was supposed to go by Persephone James, if she was allowed to mumble Elliot's name in her sleep or if someone might be listening. Some mornings, she woke up craving coffee, forgetting she had given it up.
Some mornings, she had no idea where she was in the middle of all that had changed and all that had remained the same.
A little over a half-hour after waking up in that state of confusion, she arrived, flustered, at the 16th precinct, trying hard to stay under the radar, but people seemed to be staring at her, from the entrance to the elevator to the hallways. Could this all be about her tardiness? She wasn't that late, she reckoned. Or was it all in her head?
Even though she rationally knew better, Olivia couldn't help but feel like she had something to prove. She had been replaced, after all, and now that her replacement had left, she felt like she needed to earn her spot again. She saw some people she didn't recognize, possibly rookies, new transfers — more evidence that time had passed while she'd been gone. Sometimes she felt like people looked at her like she was a rookie or a new transfer, not someone who had been working in that building for nine years.
After a while, it became quite obvious that Olivia wasn't just being paranoid. Apparently, the closer she got to the squad room, the more people would stare. She started staring back, and to an officer she actually mouthed, what's going on?, which went unanswered but for a sly nod in the general direction of the interrogation rooms.
She rushed in toward her desk to find Elliot standing, apprehensiveness all over his demeanor, and he fidgeted as he saw her, turning towards Munch and Fin's empty desks and the captain's office with something clearly weighing on his mind. "Liv, hey…"
Of course, there was the possibility that Elliot's agitation didn't have anything to do with her being late either.
They were still finding their footing together again. They'd been having a hard time reconnecting, their overwhelming familiarity standing in their way instead of helping. They knew each other well enough to push each other's buttons but they just couldn't seem to push the right ones for each situation, the dashboard of their relationship suddenly a mystery.
They had tried to address the strain in their partnership after having some issues with each other during a case. She had sat with him on his stoop in the middle of the night, drinking her tea while he drank her peace offering — a coffee that smelled way too good as it fumigated in his hands.
It had occurred to her then that it smelled like something she shouldn't have, just like him.
Even though he'd told her that he had signed his divorce papers, something that actually only contributed further to put them in complete imbalance. Their boundaries had always been so clear, that wedding band the ideal reminder of exactly where they couldn't go and the perfect alibi for whenever they came too close to going there. Now, it was gone, and with all the other changes she was still trying to adapt to, it made her feel really helpless that she couldn't tell exactly where she stood with him.
That she couldn't tell if those divorce papers granted her forbidden feelings any right to exist. To manifest. Even in the best hidden corners of her mind.
Even only mumbled in her sleep in the loneliness of her bedroom.
Olivia could sense that he wanted to say something else on top of his tentative greeting in those two seconds that had elapsed as they stared at each other, disoriented, her mind assaulted by all those hesitations about him. She glanced at her watch again: it was almost 9:40AM, but she wasn't getting any closer to understanding the reason for all the commotion, and he wasn't making a move to clarify anything.
"What's going on?" she risked almost under her breath, a bit fearful of the answer at this point.
Elliot moved his mouth like he meant to reply, but he was interrupted by Cragen's fast-paced march towards them in a beeline from his office. "Olivia, nice of you to join us."
"I'm sorry, Captain, it's just…" she started to explain, but he waved it away.
"Forget it, I need you to come with me," the captain said, silencing Olivia but not her heart as it raced with anxiety.
They walked to the interrogation rooms with Elliot on their heels. She turned to exchange a few inquisitive looks with him, but he didn't seem to have much more intel to give her, a notion that she needed to see whatever it was with her own eyes silently implied. When they arrived at Interrogation Room 1, Cragen put a hand to Olivia's back, coaxing her to walk faster towards the two-way glass.
Finally standing in front of it, she saw a man sitting there, alone, apparently in his sixties, but maybe a bit thinner than the healthy weight for his age. He had a head full of hair, salt-and-pepper in color, and he wore square-rimmed glasses over his round, brown eyes. He had his arms crossed and sat leaning back against the chair, looking peaceful, maybe bored, wearing a black polo t-shirt. A quite ordinary man, it seemed like.
After taking in all those details, Olivia turned to Cragen again. "Who's that?"
"I was hoping you could tell me," was the captain's reply, his lips pursed and his brow furrowed as he sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets.
Olivia shook her head, her gaze chasing Elliot's for any sort of explanation, but he was looking into the room as well, pinching his chin in what seemed like a worried stance.
"What do you mean?" she asked, her patience circling the drain. It felt like she'd missed the meaning of an obvious joke. "What the hell is going on?"
Cragen took a deep breath and exchanged a look with Elliot before taking a step back and letting him take over.
Elliot swallowed, approaching Olivia cautiously and starting to explain it in that low voice he always used when he gave her upsetting news. "This man showed up here, about twenty minutes ago, claiming to have information about several rapes."
Olivia waited for him to finish, but he was either done or taking a dramatic pause. She turned to Cragen then back to him, her eyes wide with urgency. "Okay. What rapes? What's his name, what do we know?"
Elliot shrugged, apparently looking for the words.
"That's the thing," Cragen intervened, definitely impatient himself. "We don't really know anything because he refuses to talk."
Olivia's heart was beating so hard that she could feel it in her throat, hear it in her ears above all other sounds. Even her own voice. "Why?"
Elliot took another step and lowered his voice another octave. "He says he'll only speak to you."