A/N: So this is a bit of a prequel and a sequel to my story "If You Love Me, Do It Gently". You certainly don't have to read that one to understand this one, or the other way around. But if you're familiar with it, you'll understand where and how this fits in.
This song is Ocean from the album of the same name. Anything that looks really good or professional or profound, just go ahead and assume it isn't mine.
How can someone stand so damn close
And feel like they're worlds away?
I can see your sad story eyes
So how do you have no words to say?
If either one of them leaned forward right now, their lips would be touching. It would be so easy. One miscalculated step, a trip, the wrong sway of a hip, and she'd finally know what it'd be like to kiss Elliot Stabler.
But though he sounded like him, even resembled him, slightly, this wasn't the same man she remembered. Something inside her kept telling her she still knew him, but did she? Amanda, Carisi, Garland, they all meant well, but they didn't understand. Or did they? Elliot had always been her blind spot, so maybe in 10 years there were now things that she missed.
They were barely a breath apart, and somehow she never felt more distant from him. It was never like this. Not when she went to Oregon. Not even when he left her for 10 years without a word. They had always been solid. She could always feel what he was thinking, what he'd do next. But right now, he might as well have been back across the ocean because he was living another life that she didn't know if she could be a part of. Or if she even wanted to. She hadn't fallen in love with Eddie Wagner all those years ago. She'd fallen in love with Elliot Stabler. But he wasn't anywhere to be found.
She'd told him to come home. She could see things in his eyes that he wanted to say, maybe to confess. But he said nothing and let her slip into the night. She felt stupid for letting a few tears escape as she climbed into her SUV, but she couldn't help but wonder why was she never enough for him? Why was she never the one he came to when things came crashing down? Lord knows he's the only person she'd ever run to. But maybe that was just a distant memory of a very long time ago.
All I want is to fall in deeper
Than I've ever been
Why won't you let me?
I can handle your heart, so help me
"I'm here because your family is worried about you," she'd said to him the night of the intervention.
It wasn't a lie. She was worried about him too. She knew bits and pieces of Elliot's life and had seen some of his worst moments. Being blinded. Almost losing his wife and newborn son in a car accident. Kathleen's diagnosis. Jenna's shooting. But none of them compared to losing his wife in a car bomb, calculated hit that at the time he thought was meant for him.
And she was ready. She was ready to take on all of his pain and emotions. She'd swallowed her anger, her fear, her confusion of the last 10 years to try to help him return to solid ground.
"I didn't ask you to be here," was his reply.
"They're worried about you because of all the things that we have witnessed," she'd said, pushing on. She wanted to make him see that she, and his children, were a safe place to fall. A soft place to land. He could be okay, he would be okay if he would just listen to them.
"Elliot, tell us what you need," she said.
She's fully prepared for whatever he says. Maybe he'll say he needs space, or he needs a glass of water, or he needs them all to get out of his living room. She's just been through crisis training. Hell, this time last night she was a hostage in a restaurant talking a grief stricken acquaintance off the metaphorical ledge.
"I love you," he said.
Well, that might have been the one thing he could have said that she wasn't prepared for.
Here you are, next to me
So much beauty at my feet
All I wanna do is swim
But the waves keep crashin' in
No, I'm not afraid to drown
Take me out, take me down
"Listen to me, listen," she said, brushing past his admission. "Everyone in this room recognizes that something's not right."
She's desperately trying to cover or ignore what he just said. For his sake, for the kids. For her own. She couldn't let herself believe those three words right now, the ones she had always secretly hoped to hear from him that she hid in the darkest corners or her mind. Never wrote them in a journal, never brought them up to her therapist. This was only something she only ever believed could happen in her weakest moment under William Lewis' control, and that was to comfort herself before what she anticipated would be a long and painful death.
But she'd never expected to hear them like this. After his wife just died. With his kids in the room. So she couldn't let them sidetrack her. He could keep piling on the emotional waves. She could take them.
"Everyone but you," she said.
She hopes maybe this time it'll sink in. Maybe he'll open up. Maybe he'll admit something. Anything.
"I'm drowning, how's that for recognition?" he said.
"Then take our hand," she said. "Grab onto us."
She wants to tell him she's not afraid to drown with him. If he'd just take her hand. If he'd just let her in, they could sink together until they remembered how to swim again.
"I know you're just trying to help; I know you're all just trying to help," he said. "But all you're doing is pushing me further under. It's like a weight that is dragging me down."
So he was the one sinking, but he thought they were the ones drowning him. It stung at the time, and it stung in her memory as she pulled away from his new apartment, praying to whatever God would listen that someday Elliot might come home, both body and soul, instead of just a shell of the man she used to know.
I'm so tired of the shore
Let me in, baby
You're an ocean beautiful and blue
I wanna swim in you
She thought they'd been making progress at Fin's non-wedding. They talked a little, mostly surface level things about his apartment hunting, Eli's adjustment to America, and people at the party that he didn't know.
It felt like finally, after all this time, her partner was returning. He smiled again, laughed at her dry humor. He'd walked her to her car and called her the minute she was out of the parking lot.
"Since I won't be able to see you blink your lights," he'd cracked when she picked up. "Thought maybe we could talk until you get there?"
She'd heard him on the phone, even after she'd blacked out from the accident.
"Liv," he yelled into the phone. "Liv, stay with me. Somebody call a friggin' bus! I love you."
She thought she'd seen him at the rescue. She thought he was one of the FDNY EMTs that rescued her. It was just his voice in her head from the phone call. But she preferred to stay there, in that way station of consciousness where he was there with her, pulling her further into some other universe where they could be together.
Like a lighthouse I've been shinin' bright
Through the dark for the both of us
And "I've done it outta love" is not enough
But God, how I wish it was
She sat in her car, parked in her building's garage for a good long while after she got home from his apartment. She knows he's been going through a lot, but she's felt like ever since he's been back she's been doing all the heavy lifting.
She's the one who came to his intervention. Who called him on his PTSD. Who has been exactly where he left her 10 years ago, just waiting for him to come back to her, like a ship in the night, guided by a lighthouse to safe port.
But apparently she was anything but a safe port with him. She'd suspected something between him and Angela Wheatley, the way he was acting at the hospital when she almost died. And she knew with his squirly behavior at the trafficking bust that something was going on between him and that Flutura woman.
And she'd done all of this, all of most of the things she'd ever done for him and his kids, out of love. There was no use denying it to herself anymore. She loved Elliot Stabler and had for years. And apparently he loved her too. But she'd seen what his love was like, the way he treated Kathy. He kept her at arm's length, shut himself up inside, hid within the job. But now, she wasn't part of that job anymore, and he could hide from her just as easily as he used to hide from Kathy.
She didn't know why she ever thought they would be any different. Why his love for her could be any different than the love he gave to his wife of nearly 40 years.
Her loving him wasn't enough to fix things, but God, how she wished it was.
And I don't wanna find out
How much lonely I can take before you lose me
Baby, look at me and swear you won't lose me
It had been a long 10 years of silence, and a long three months of undercover. Olivia was lonely. She hadn't seen or heard from Elliot again since the night on his terrace and she was wondering if she ever would again. She wondered if she'd scared him off by asking him to come home, sounding like a wife, not a partner or a friend just concerned for his well-being.
She was lonely, she was hurting. And when Burton Lowe fell back into her life, she thought maybe this was her chance not to be lonely anymore. There had only ever been three men she truly thought she loved in her life. One ate his gun, the other lost his mind, and the third was just lost, until Nick walked him right back into her office.
But after realizing she'd been groomed, she'd been seduced by an older man with vile intentions not just as a teenager, but just last week. And the even bigger realization that her mother was never trying to ruin her life or her happiness with Burton, but rather save her from her same, drunk fate… Well, that just left Olivia feeling lonelier than ever.
And Elliot, being back but not being around was adding more fuel to the loneliness fire. She didn't know how much more she could take before she had to let him go again too.
I can't let it go
From moments in your arms
But they come back again
The waves, the waves, the waves, the waves
The waves, the waves, the waves, the waves
She slept horribly that night. Her dreams were filled with Elliot. Every time he ever touched her. Every time he ever held her. The day Eli was born. The night Sonia Paxton died. The night Kathy died.
The night he crawled to her on his knees to beg for some sort of forgiveness for all the pain he'd caused. Sure he was high as a kite, but his touch was so intimate. His head on her stomach, his hand pawing up her body, grazing her breast, touching her lips and cheek. It was the closest she felt they'd ever been, and they'd been nearly naked posing as a prostitute and her client once before, wearing far less, doing far worse.
Everything was coming back to her in waves, and now she was the one drowning, but she was drowning alone.
Here you are, next to me
So much beauty at my feet
"It's done," the message on her phone read. "When you're free, I'd like to see you."
Noah was with Lucy for the weekend. She'd gotten him tickets to see a Broadway show for his birthday last year and with everything opening back up they were finally able to go. Olivia had the apartment to herself and nothing but time to kill, so she responded before she could lose her nerve.
"Can you be here in an hour?" she responded.
She heard a knock at her door an hour later, on the dot. She truly didn't know what would be waiting for her on the other side. Every meeting between them since he got back had ended with more drama, more hurt feelings, and more pain.
She didn't know how much more she could take, but she also couldn't stay away.
Olivia was pleasantly surprised to find that he shaved before coming over and he was smiling at her in a way he used to do, before dead wives, and Rome, and Albanian mobs got in their way. She wasn't prepared for him to cross the threshold so quickly slam the door shut behind him, and envelop her in his arms like it was something they did every day.
He was crushing and cradling her at the same time, his face buried in her hair. It was more like the reunion she'd pictured in her head time and time again about what would happen if he did ever come back into her life. More of the gentle reconnecting of two souls rather than the explosions of car bombs and the wail of sirens.
She pulled back just enough to look up at him.
"I see we've gotten rid of the beard," she teased, reaching up to stroke his bare chin.
"That was more Eddie's style, not Elliot's," he said.
"I agree," she said.
His clean-shaven face, the sparkle in his eye, was beautiful to her. She hoped it was all still beautiful to her after they talked.
All I wanna do is swim
But the waves keep crashin' in
No, I'm not afraid to drown
Take me out, take me down
I'm so tired of the shore
Let me in, baby
You're an ocean beautiful and blue
I wanna swim in you
It was the second time in two weeks Olivia was wrapped up in nothing but sheets as she waited for a man to return to bed with her, but this time, she felt much more content than the last.
"I couldn't find your bottle opener," Elliot said, precariously trying to get situated on her large, fluffy bed with two glasses of brown liquid in his hand. "So, can you settle for twist-top root beer?"
Olivia hardly recognized the laugh that left her throat. It was light, it was joyful. It was like listening to a brand new person, or rather an old familiar friend she hadn't seen in a while.
"Absolutely," she said. "I hid the bottle opener from Noah, someplace he'll never find it."
"Damn," Elliot said. "It's probably in the cabinet under the microwave behind like a package of Oreos you're also hiding from him."
"So you did find it," she said, laughing again because he was exactly right.
"Lucky guess," he said, clicking glasses with her.
"Do you still feel like you're drowning?" Olivia asked as they leaned against the headboard and sipped their root beer.
"Drowning?" Elliot asked, confused.
"At the intervention, you said you felt like you were drowning," she said. "Like we were all pulling you further under. Do you still feel that way?"
He swirled the root beer around in his glass as if it were bourbon, then took a long swig.
"I'm not sure," he said. "I haven't been out of undercover and back to reality long enough to tell."
She reached for his free hand with hers and interlaced their fingers together.
"I'm not afraid to drown with you, El," she said. "You just have to let me in."
"I don't want to bring you down to where I am, Liv," Elliot said. "You deserve better."
"Even the divers have to get to the bottom of the Ocean to make a rescue," she said. "So maybe we won't drown together, but we have to be open with one another."
"You were pretty damn open with me about 20 minutes ago," he said with a smirk.
"Once an arrogant jackass, always an arrogant jackass," she said, rolling her eyes.
Elliot took her glass and his and set them both on the bedside table and slid closer to her so she was in his arms and he could whisper right in her ear.
"Jokes aside, I hear you," he said. "Maybe from here on out we try to swim with the tide instead of against it?"
"I'd like that," she said, turning her head slightly.
If either one of them leaned forward right now, their lips would be touching. It would be so easy. So she did.
A/N: So fun fact, I actually started this story before any of my others, even the first one I ever posted on here. I started it right after the intervention episode in the spring and the first draft sucked. Only a teeny tiny bit of that original story is even in here. And I gotta say, this version is way better. There is so much more to unpack now that we're another season into both shows.
Thanks for reading!