11 - NORTH
Elliot trudged up the stairs hastily, as though running from something — at least that's how Olivia interpreted it as she followed, part of her still tethered to him and to what had happened a couple of hours earlier, the rest of her keeping a safe distance, grappling for objectivity.
If she still had any left.
He rushed into the apartment as if there was something urgent he needed to do. There was something urgent she needed to do.
Olivia closed the door behind her cautiously, her eyes tracing Elliot's every movement as he started to pace, clearly lost in thought, tilting his head up and down, turning it toward every corner as if looking for something.
He seemed miles away from what had happened downstairs.
"Well?" she asked, voice a bit shaky, muscles tense in an attempt to ground herself. "Are you going to give me an explanation—"
He splayed his fingers in the air urgently, eyes wide gripping at hers through her haze, and she knew he was asking her to extend her trust in him for just a little bit longer.
There was some reason why he still couldn't speak to her. He continued his silent inspection.
"What are you doing?" Olivia whispered, anxiety getting the better of her.
This time, Elliot completely ignored her. She stood there, watching his search become more thorough and clumsy; he started picking up objects, examining them. He took apart both lamps on their nightstands. He checked cupboards and opened drawers and tossed the contents of the remaining boxes they hadn't yet unpacked.
That continued for a good ten minutes before he stopped walking, scratched his head, confusion the only thing in his expression as he cast his lost stare over every already-dissected inch of the apartment.
"Hey!" Olivia raised her voice again, startling him out of his trance.
A lifted index finger left behind in the wake of his resumed haste was all she got — and reason enough for her to charge towards him, driving him into a corner so he couldn't help but stare straight at her.
"I swallowed your cum tonight," she said boldly. "I think I deserve to know what the hell is going on."
She watched his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, his alarmed eyes taking a quick stroll down to her lips before they lifted past her shoulder and fixated on the wall behind the bed and stayed there, a myriad of unidentified feelings playing across his features.
"Found it," he whispered.
Olivia turned around to follow his gaze, confused about what she was supposed to be looking at. "What?" she asked, her voice in a higher pitch as questions kept piling up with no matching answers.
She felt Elliot's arm surround her and his breath warm up her ear.
"A camera," he whispered, and before she could react, his other hand cupped her cheek, coaxing her head to turn back around and face him. "Let's take a shower," he proposed, smiling, a meaningful nod asking her yet again to follow his lead.
It slowly dawned on Olivia — what the search had been all about.
She shifted between his glowing irises, understanding hanging in the air between them, then slowly settling in her conscience.
Her head spun back around, and then she saw it. A camera. A round, glinting, gloating eye that loomed in the corner of a picture frame.
Someone had seen it all, everything. Everything they'd been so careful to hide in the pitch-black nights, in the secret mornings, undercover, under the covers, under cover of darkness.
They could no longer refuse to look when someone had made a point to watch. The awareness that there was something to be seen hung heavy on Olivia's shoulders.
They stood in silence, eyes having full conversations — the only ones they could be sure weren't heard by anybody else.
She let her hand's grip around his elbow loosen, and her arm fall along his forearm until their fingers entwined, then let him lead her to the bathroom. He closed the door and set the water running while she tried to handle the chaos in her mind.
"What if there are cameras here too?" she whispered against the sound of the water that the shower spilled vigorously next to them.
Elliot's glance wandered a little around the bathroom before landing on her again. "Try to act normal in case there are any," he said, starting to unbutton his shirt.
Olivia followed, and took off her boots and her jeans while she held onto their eye contact for dear life. Trust me, he'd said downstairs. She didn't like the way the dots seemed to be illicitly connecting in the back of her mind.
"Why are there any cameras at all?" she asked hesitantly.
Elliot paused, then sighed.
Fuck.
He took a step closer, gripping at the hem of her blouse to justify his proximity. "Hobbes is a voyeur, and so are his friends we met tonight," he said in a still cautiously-low voice, engraved with meaning. "I think our vics did more than just handle the bar and the dope for him."
Elliot helped her out of the shirt, then watched her patiently, waiting for her to fully process what her brain had already started to contemplate. She tried to stall that understanding, afraid of what it entailed, and if she was completely honest, suddenly afraid of her own reaction.
She wasn't sure what it was going to be.
It was her turn to sigh, and Elliot seemed to read her need for a pause, for a moment of truce. He reached for her, pulling her to him, her arms latching around his neck as if pulled to a magnet. It was easy to fall into him — it was just like letting go.
Their kiss was a deep intake of oxygen in the middle of the vacuum. And now, as if it weren't loaded with enough layers of meaning before, it was all wrapped-up in the excuse of putting on a show for any possible viewers.
They undressed each other without effort or words, then slipped into the shower, the water so hot against Olivia's cold skin that she let out an anguished moan as her feet acclimated. She looked away from Elliot's half-erection, but she could sense it twitching.
The water ran down her hair as she exhaled long and hard, then let her arms and Elliot's find the best setup around each other as she rested on his shoulder.
"They saw everything," she stated; it was a relief to let the obvious words out, like a breath she'd been holding.
Everything. So much fit into that word.
"I know," Elliot replied.
"Do you think they heard us?"
Olivia tried to rewind the tape in her mind, thinking of all the things they'd already said inside of those four walls they'd assumed were private. About the case, about themselves.
"I don't know," he said, then voiced the question she was already asking in her mind. "Did we say anything?"
Each other's real names were bound to have escaped in gasps and moans.
But he was probably referring to specifics about the case.
"I don't know," she said truthfully, trying to navigate the blur of memories of the last few days.
Olivia pulled away to look at him. "Do you think there are more cameras?"
"We need to look harder. And search the bar." He paused, taking a deep breath before narrowing his eyes. "This should also answer your question about downstairs."
The last dot connected, and the picture lit up. Of course. Trust me.
They'd had a live audience.
"They were watching?" she asked as a reflex, even though she needed no further confirmation.
"I'm sorry," Elliot shook his head. "I couldn't say much. I made sure you had your back to them at least..."
And suddenly, it all made sense.
Love you. The two words had been bouncing off the walls of her mind in the background ever since he'd said them, and now she knew that it had all been an act.
"So that's why you said it."
Silence gathered rapidly between them, mounting up like the steam from the hot water. She looked away the next second, but his muscles tensed up, she could sense that as well. He knew exactly what she was talking about.
"I don't think they can hear us," Elliot said, as if she hadn't said anything, but his body was still tense. "It would've blown our cover a long time ago."
"They were watching," Olivia repeated, and somehow, stating it this time made her look at that piece of information as if for the first time.
And there it was: the reaction she had been afraid of sent a wave of heat throughout her body as she imagined people watching her getting down on her knees for Elliot in the storage room.
She wasn't supposed to be thrilled.
Elliot had pretty much established they were only seen, not heard.
As he threw something together for a late dinner, he took the opportunity to inspect the kitchen more thoroughly for possible extra eyes and ears.
He found one in the corner of the cabinet above the sink.
Olivia had been strangely quiet since their discussion in the shower, and he wondered what part of it she was struggling with.
So that's why you said it. His love declaration downstairs. She thought he'd said it for the benefit of their audience.
He wasn't so sure.
It had just sounded like a thing to say in his head — that was the official version he was telling himself anyway.
"Hobbes made it clear that Patricia and Geoff used to… perform for him," he said cautiously when they sat down across from each other to eat.
At the same table where he'd bent her over on Sunday morning. He pushed the thought away and stuffed his mouth with food.
Olivia raised alarmed eyes at him. "You really think they can't hear us?" she whispered.
Elliot shrugged, chewing casually. "I think looking scared is worse than talking, yeah."
She smiled. "Well, maybe I'm just not as good an actor as you are."
Yeah, she wasn't going to let that go.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he challenged.
She was clearly ignoring the elephant in the room — all the acting they'd done before knowing they were supposed to act as a couple full time for the cameras.
And perform as a couple.
Elliot watched her as she debated whether to engage in an argument or not. After some deliberation, she stood up, took her plate to the sink. "Nothing," she sighed. "This is just an assignment, and it just got ten times harder."
"Did it really?" he spun towards her, questioning her while she kept her back to him, pushing the rest of her food into the trash bin. "Ever wonder why I'm such a good actor?" he pushed, and she stilled.
He waited, but she just stood there, unmoving. Waiting for him. He stood up, approached her slowly, halting just an inch away from brushing her back with his chest as he extended his left arm around her waist to set his empty plate into the sink. He took in the smell of her hair, where his hand had been buried not that long ago, holding her head in place while he thrusted into her mouth.
He ghosted her ear with his lips, and she shuddered, inhaled sharply.
"Maybe I like pretending you're mine," he rumbled, his fingers tingling as he restrained them from touching her.
Maybe he also didn't hate the idea of letting people watch him make her his as much as he'd thought he would. His cock twitched at the thought of all those men watching him standing there with Olivia on her knees for him.
He couldn't help it. Before he knew it, his tongue was already tasting her skin, his lips latched onto her throat, consumed by how she had swallowed him whole, how she was swallowing him whole. His hands went rogue, one clamping down onto her hip and bringing her ass flush against his erection while the other snaked up underneath her blouse, fingers expertly maneuvering the cup of her bra in order to bite into her flesh, flick the taut nipple.
"Elliot," she moaned, fueling his hand to travel further south and wrap around her crotch. "We can't, they're watching," she said, firmer, but her voice broke slightly.
Let them, he would've said if he were able to keep his mouth off of her.
This time, she elbowed him away. "Stop it!" she yelled, her profile to him, her eyes purposely aiming away from him. She exhaled, very still, her arm still barricading her. "This is just an assignment."
Elliot smiled, the irony that letting him go on and have his way with her had just become the assignment not lost on him and probably not on her as she kept her stance, her muscles only relaxing a little as he started to put some distance between them.
He shook his head, running his hand over his hair, his body still not completely under control as he headed for the door, slamming it behind him.
We can't, they're watching.
Olivia wasn't sure if she had pleaded with him or with herself.
Maybe I like pretending you're mine. As if she wasn't. As if her throat was't pulsing with the echo of his thrusts, as if she couldn't feel his flesh shoved into her windpipe, becoming air itself as she breathed him in, sucking him for oxygen.
She might drown if he didn't come back.
But of course he would come back. The assignment.
Every wall felt like a prying intruder, and Olivia realized that the way she now felt knowing someone might see the tears that stubbornly broke free from her eyes was the way she was supposed to feel knowing someone had watched Elliot bending her over the kitchen table. That the urge to cover herself as she changed into her nightgown was supposed to have manifested when Elliot had helped her undress in the bathroom.
She quarantined under the cold covers, shivering for various reasons, with no hope that sleep would come visit. When she heard the door, she realized she'd been waiting for him.
Had she turned into a woman who couldn't fall asleep on her own? She closed her eyes.
Very still, she waited, picturing his every movement from the sounds she could hear as if she was the one watching the surveillance camera feed. She felt the atmosphere change when he took his place next to her, his heat like an embrace even if they kept apart.
"Hey," she whispered.
"Thought you were asleep," he said, slurring a little. Maybe he'd been downstairs drinking the whole time while she'd felt stranded, abandoned.
"I was pretending I was," she confessed, suddenly comfortable with the truth. With many truths.
His sigh told her before his words or his touch that he was on the same wavelength.
"Liv…" he said, wrapping his arm around her waist. She covered it with her own. "Why is it that out there everything is so confusing, but when we're here, right here, just you and me… it all makes sense?"
Olivia sighed, relieved that he was just as lost as her, finding a North of truth in that makeshift bed, under fake names and false pretenses.
"I wish I knew."