A/N- Well my dears, I hope you can forgive me for that cliffhanger! I just
had to make sure that you came back for this one... it should more than
satisfy. Rated Teen for smut... ah, but who gets our favorite blue-eyed
detective?
"Elliot!" Olivia screamed, grabbing the handle.
Elliot slammed the door open, the doorknob ripping into his wall. "What in
the- For God's sake, don't DO that-" he stammered once he saw that there
wasn't a mad rapist on his front porch.
Anymore, anyway.
Morgan held out a shaky hand, holding three photographs. "These were on the
door when we got home..."
Elliot took them just as Elizabeth came to the door. "What happ-" Olivia,
Elliot and Morgan all snapped their heads up at her. Elliot tried to turn
the pictures away from her, but her small hand grabbed his and held it.
They were her pictures, after all.
"I knew he'd come back," Elizabeth whispered.
"Liz, who is he?" Elliot said, his voice barely contained, the quiet tone
deadly- the moment of stillness as a rattlesnake waits for the perfect
moment to strike. He clenched his fists around the pictures, crushing them,
and wished he could do the same to whoever took them.
When Elizabeth could only stand there, crying and shaking, Elliot coudn't
take it. "Son of a bitch!" he shouted, slamming one of his fists
into the wall. "Fucking coward! I DARE you to come back here, I
FUCKING DARE YOU to try and hurt her again!" He ran to the railing, leaning
over. "YOU HEAR ME, YOU LITTLE PUNK? YOU JUST TRY AND FACE ME!" Elliot gripped the metal rail with both hands, his grasp as tight as his jaw was
clenched. Olivia walked over to him and laid a hand on his back, hesitantly.
He flinched like she'd struck him, and instinctively raised his hand, then
lowered it back down.
"Why don't you guys go for a ride," Morgan said quietly, stepping towards the door. She motioned for Elizabeth to follow her inside. "Look, you two just go sort yourselves out-"
"Don't talk to me like that," Elliot said hoarsely. He looked close to being
sick.
"C'mon, Elliot," Olivia said, placing her hand on his back again. "You're no
use to Elizabeth like this. And you're scaring her."
"And me," Morgan muttered. She wrapped an arm around Elizabeth, who had gone from terrified shock to just shock.
"Fine," Elliot snapped, storming down the stairs. Olivia took a deep breath,
and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Sure. Foist him off on me like this," she told Morgan before following her
irate partner down the stairs to her car.
"We've got a chick flick, chocolate strawberries, and popcorn with our names
on 'em, girlie whirlie," Morgan said lightly. "Thought I admit this spoils the mood." Elizabeth didn't say anything, just stood next to the door.
"C'mon," Morgan stepped inside and held the door open. "Come inside."
Elizabeth followed her and sat on the couch, utterly silent. Her face was
motionless. She crossed her arms and let some of her hair fall forward,
hiding her eyes. Tears fell down her face without so much as a sniffle.
Morgan sighed, and crouched in front of the TV. "Can you show me how to make
the DVD player work?"
Elizabeth picked up the remote, and switched the picture and turned it on.
Morgan found the EJECT button and put in the movie. Once the strains of
country music and Southern scenery started, she sat on the couch next to
Elizabeth.
"I remember the first time I saw this movie. I just love the beauty parlor
scene. And all the colors of everything. It's so different from here, you
know, in the south. Everything is just so much slower there. I always
thought that was silly, but it's true. And I even grew up in a pretty good
sized city."
Morgan was just going to talk until Elizabeth said something back. Elizabeth
let her go on for awhile, talking to her, talking to herself, talking to the
movie. Laughing at herself, at the one-liners.
"I didn't know he took pictures," she blurted out suddenly, the words
surprising her. "Oh, God, he took pictures!" She buried her
face in the pillow beside her, curling up tightly.
Morgan turned down the sound, and waited for the rest to come. And it did.
"He came back... Why did he come back? He got what he wanted, he got it, why
does he hate me so much... Morgan, why?"
"Because he's a coward, and a bastard, and... oh honey, I don't know. He
wants to control someone, he wants to make them hurt and scream. He might
thinks that means they love him if they do whatever he wants, he might want
someone to hurt as much as he does... I don't know."
"What did I do to make him hate me so much?" Elizabeth demanded.
"I don't know. You'll have to tell me what happened," Morgan said gently.
"Where are we going?" Elliot finally asked, once they were free of the city
and had hit open highway.
"I have no idea. The beach sounds nice."
"It's forty degrees outside, Liv."
"I didn't say we'd go swimming, idiot."
"What the hell is this, anyway?"
"What?"
"This. All of this. Liz won't tell me what happened. But she'll tell some
total stranger in an ER, she'll cry in front of this Texas cowgirl wannabe,
when I haven't seen her cry since she was nine and skinned her knee, and
she'll- you-"
"She told me."
"Just what in the hell does she think I'm going to do?" Elliot asked,
frustration and helplessness in his voice instead of anger.
"This."
"What do you mean 'this'?"
"She's afraid you're going to lose it. To scream and hit things and want to
stand him against a tree and shoot him."
"Well, excuse the hell outta me! I didn't know I wasn't allowed to be-"
"Would you shut up and think about her for five seconds?" Olivia cried.
"Yes, we're all very impressed with your big manly muscles and how loudly
you can scream and shout and break things, but that isn't what she needs.
She needs you to shut up and listen to her, and cry and hug her and tell her
how sorry you are and that you love her, and- Goddammit, Elliot-" she made a
fist and raised it to smack the steering wheel, but stopped herself. She
gritted her teeth and gripped the wheel so hard her knuckles showed white.
"What?" he asked, spitting the word out. "WHAT, Liv!" he shouted,
sick to death of everyone handling him with kid gloves.
She screeched the car to a halt, swerving over to the shoulder. She turned
to face him, fire in her dark eyes. "Do not," she started, her voice too
calm for the anger that she felt. "Ever. Talk. To me. Like that. I am trying
to help you, and this time, I'm not just going to walk away from whatever
fireworks show you want to put on to keep everyone out, because this time?
It's not about you. It's about Elizabeth, and you finally seeing why you
cannot just shut everyone out, like you can lock yourself up and throw away
the damn key. If you want to act like a five year old throwing a temper
tantrum, you go RIGHT the hell ahead. But you are NOT getting out of this
car until you finally face whatever is making you like this. Or I swear, you
can fucking WALK back home, and don't expect to come back with a shit-eating
grin on your face and make it all better with a half-ass explanation. I
swear to God, I will talk to Cragen and have you taken off the squad, and
don't you think for a second I wouldn't do it." At his shocked and betrayed
face, Olivia laughed cruelly. "Do you think we're stupid? That we
don't know what you'd do when we catch her rapist?"
"I'd kill him," Elliot said tightly, the muscles in his arms trembling to
keep his fists from going through her window. "I'd kill him with my bare
hands. He hurt my little girl."
Olivia just kept looking at him, breathing heavily, like she'd start up on
her rant again any minute. He looked out the window, watching the headlights
of cars whizzing past him.
"Tell me," Olivia whispered, all trace of temper gone from her voice, now
all soft and husky in the dark car. "Elliot, please tell me."
"I should have known. The nurse... said there were old scars... they're too
deep... someone hurt her before, and I should have known."
Olivia sat silently, dying to tell him what Elizabeth had in the hospital.
She pursed her lips and waited.
"She... she didn't tell me. Someone hurt her, and she knows who, and they
hurt her..." Elliot closed his eyes to try and stay ahead of his tears, but
they broke free anyway. For the first time, Olivia heard grief and guilt
break his voice, not anger. Even that night Lizzie had told them, he had
just reacted to what happened, not really let himself see what was
happening. What had already happened.
He knew why he hadn't seen it before. He'd been too busy seeing something
that wasn't there, too occupied to even think about his own children. He
couldn't tell her. She'd die if she knew. She'd hate him if she knew.
God, this must be what Lizzie feels like...
"Elliot..." Olivia breathed, reaching across to brush her fingertips across
his cheek, drying his tears. He looked up, and their eyes locked.
Oh... was all she had time to think before suddenly they were both
leaning in, and his hand was on the nape of her neck, tangling her hair,
then his lips met hers with the softest touch.
She pulled back for the tiniest second, then forgot why she had as he
followed her, resting his forehead against hers and she tilted her face to
kiss him again, deeper this time. She brought both hands to cradle his face,
heat flooding through her. Elliot pulled her closer with one arm across her
back, and with his free hand, tilted his seat back. She clumsily half-fell
on top of him and a passing car's lights illuminated their faces for an
instant. One side of his mouth tilted up, and she smiled back.
"Hi," he said simply. She smiled broader.
"Hi, yoursel-" and then he wrapped both arms around her, pulling her close.
She swung her legs across the seat, straddling him with her knees.
"Now I remember why I hate sex in cars," she muttered after another
breathless kiss.
Elliot devoutly hoped she had a plan for how this was going to work, because
the last time he'd done this, he was twenty-two years more flexible, and it
didn't help that his mind had utterly deserted him at her last three words.
"My apartment is a little occupied," he meant to say, but he'd forgotten how
to speak as her hands were doing something absolutely wonderful to the
button of his jeans.
No! Wait! Stop! NOT GOOD! a voice inside her head yelled at her.
BAD PLAN! She shoved it aside in her mind. She'd been listening to
that voice for years, and damned if it was going to stop her after they'd
gone this far.
Elliot flipped her over, pinning her to the seat from the waist down.
Somehow her bra got undone in the process. His hands slid over her back, and
he marveled at how silky and soft her skin was. She shivered at his touch,
his hands cold as the wintry night outside, but his hands felt fused to her
skin, and she liked it that way.
Their mouths met again, and this time Olivia parted her lips, her tongue
gently slipping into his mouth. She could taste the tears from just minutes
before as he searched for something in her, and apparently found it. They
stayed like that, seemingly every possible inch touching, her back arched
into his body, locked for hours, seconds, days, not even a moment, before he
had to break it off to catch his breath. It came in short, raspy gasps that
wouldn't fill his chest, and Olivia reached for him again. He shook his head
halfway, still trying to remember how to breathe.
She whispered his name, and cupped his cheek in one small hand. He looked
into her eyes again, and suddenly she was afraid. She was absolutely
terrified he would regret this, that it would be chalked up to an emotional
day and sexual energy, nothing special. She shook beneath him,
uncontrollably, and took her own ragged breath, choked with tears about to
reach the surface.
He saw her eyes, glazed with unabashed lust start to fill, and immediatly
focused on her. "'Liv," he said softly.
She closed her eyes, the tears that had been welling in her eyes falling down her face. Elliot rolled to the side and let her sit up. She swiped at the tears and sniffled.
"What?" Elliot whispered, keeping his arm around her. "Sweetheart?"
"I don't want-" she started, then stopped with her hand to her mouth. She took another deep breath to steady herself.
She said it so quietly he couldn't hear her. He leaned closer to her.
"I don't want it to be like this," she repeated nearly under her breath.