A/N: many thanks to adventurousdeer on tumblr for helping me find the word that had escaped me and nearly prevented me from writing the chapter entirely. It was moue, if anyone was wondering.
She was just standing there, looking at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was crazy; he felt crazy. Manic, halfway out of his mind, buzzing with a certainty bordering on holy, his every nerve ending firing and snapping in a chaotic, vibrant, stunning sort of electrocution. Free falling, that's what he was, plummeting from such a great height with no parachute to catch him, the adrenaline flooding through him making it all but impossible to think, to realize the danger he was in. Spiraling towards his own doom, surely, towards the ruination of his life, but delighting in it, for he had at last caught hold of freedom, would die with the taste of it on his tongue and the sight of her face burned on the backs of his eyelids.
"Are you drunk?" she demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. The expression she wore was one he recognized; Olivia was pissed. Mad as hell, and she had every right to be, but Jesus she was pretty. Bernini's Proserpina, beautiful and supple and real, and bound up in grief.
"No-"
"Then you should go home, Elliot."
How many years had she spent telling him that, he wondered; just how many times had she said those words to him? Sent him home, back to his wife, to his children, to the life he'd chosen, away from her? How must it have wounded her, he asked himself, how much must it have hurt, knowing he wasn't hers to keep, knowing that she had to send him away? Maybe he was crazy and maybe it hadn't hurt her at all and maybe she didn't want anything to do with him; the possibility that Liv had no desire to be chosen remained, but it was a slim one. He knew this woman, down to her bones. He knew her heart, because that heart was just like his. That's the deal, she'd told him in a terrible voice, you made your choice. Like she wished he'd chosen something else. He had chosen now, and he could only pray that she would jump from the ledge and join him, despite her anger, despite her hurt.
"I'm not going back," he told her. "No matter what you say, even if you hate me and you never wanna see me again, I'm not going back, Liv."
She didn't like that too much; her lower lip pouted in a moue of distaste, her eyes dark and unforgiving.
"Have you lost your fucking mind?"
"No," he said quickly, though privately he thought the answer might have been a resounding yes. "I'm thinking clearly, for once. I'm not worried about what I'm supposed to do or what people expect from me or what's gonna make my old man happy. I'm thinking about what's best for all of us. Kathy deserves to be with a man who wants to be with her, and my kids deserve better than the two of us stuck together and miserable, and you deserve…Jesus, Liv, you deserve the whole goddamn world. You deserve someone who loves you."
And he did, with every piece of himself, against all logic and propriety, love her. He'd not seen her face in ten fucking years and there was no telling how the time had changed them both and maybe they were strangers now, but when he looked at her he saw her, his Olivia, as she had been, as she would always be, the piece of his heart he had been missing for so long now, his home, walking around on two legs, and he loved her. Ten years was not enough time to unshackle his heart from hers; a century would not have been long enough. A millennium. His heart would know hers, any time, any place, in any universe.
"Jesus," Olivia whispered, but she didn't sound impressed; she sounded like she wanted to hit him again.
"I know you've got a kid," he rushed to say, "and I know you've probably got a man-" there was no way, he thought, that she didn't have a man - "and I know you're pissed at me and you got every right to be. I fucked up, Liv. I fucked up, and I missed so much, and I don't…I don't wanna miss another minute. I don't wanna spend another day living this fucked up life without you."
She held her hand up, asked him for silence, asked him for a reprieve from the onslaught of his confessions, and he heeded her, closed his mouth and rocked on his heels, so full of boundless energy he couldn't keep himself still, so close to bursting with words he longed to say to her that he worried he might bite a hole through his tongue trying to keep quiet. But he did it, for her. He'd do anything for her.
Olivia had taken up a post on the far side of the room from him, the big empty bed between them, still neatly made, her bag sitting open on top of it, and as he looked at her she began to move, making a beeline for the minifridge over by the bathroom. The bathroom door was open and the mirror was still foggy from her shower and he could feel the damp in the air, could smell her shampoo, and he shivered with the realization that she had so recently been naked, standing there with water slicking over her hair, droplets like diamonds on her skin, that she was probably still naked now, underneath that thin robe, if the loose, intoxicating sway of her ass was anything to go by. She opened the fridge and pulled out one of the mini bottles and that was gonna cost her a fortune but she ripped the top off it, and then grabbed a second. That second one she tossed to him, easily, from across the room, and he caught it without trouble, grinning like a lunatic.
But she didn't come closer; she leaned back against the wall, and drank slowly from the bottle, staring at him, her eyes narrowed, and he could almost feel it, the way the wheels in her mind were turning as she marshaled her arguments, prepared herself to rip him limb from limb.
"You're a son of a bitch, you know that?" she said after a minute or two of agonizing silence.
"I know."
"You walked away from me, Elliot," she continued in a voice seething with pent up rage. "You abandoned me, and I went through hell while you were gone. You left me thinking I was worthless to you."
"Liv-" she was not worthless, not to him; this woman was more valuable than anything else on the goddamn planet as far as he was concerned, and he was desperate to tell her so, but she shot him a look that said shut up, and he did, for her sake.
"You did miss a lot. You missed so much, and if you think I'm just gonna forget about it-"
"I don't wanna forget," he interrupted before he could stop himself. "I wanna know."
"And you think I should tell you? Just let you right back in, like nothing's changed, and what? Just…fall into your arms, be so fucking grateful-"
"I'm the one who's grateful," he said. "I thought I was never going to see your face again, and then I walked through that door and I saw you…I'm so fucking grateful, Liv."
Through some trick of fate he did not understand, blessed by the invisible, all-powerful hand of God, he had been given the chance to see her again, had been given one last opportunity to reach out and take hold of the one thing his heart longed for above all others, to mend that which had been torn asunder, to make them both happy, for once. And he was grateful for it, thankful for it, so fucking relived he could have dropped to his knees right there in a prayer of that gratitude, but she'd definitely think he was crazy if he did that, and so he just barely managed to restrain himself.
Across the room from him her resolve was weakening. Or no, that wasn't right; there was nothing weak about Olivia. There never had been. She was strong and brave and so fucking determined, and she was not defeated now. What she was, he thought, was hopeful. It was hope, flickering in her eyes, making her look at him like she'd never seen him before. It was the same wild hope that filled him, the hope that maybe, finally, they'd found their way to one another. It was the hope that he was not lying, even as her rational mind, so keenly aware of his faults and all the ways he'd hurt her before, counseled her to prudence. She was hopeful, even when she thought she had no right to be. There was something like want in her, as if she wanted to believe him, wanted every word he said to be the truth, but still she held herself back, remote and untouchable behind the defenses she had erected to protect herself from him.
"You can't do this," she told him then, regretfully. "You can't…you can't stand there, and tell me you're just gonna walk out on your family and expect me to just go along with this. Elliot, this is crazy. You're gonna wake up tomorrow and you're gonna want to take it back."
"I won't-"
"You don't even know me anymore. You don't have any idea…we can't just…what do you think is gonna happen? You think you're just gonna walk out on your job and come back to the city and I'm just gonna let you have me and let you meet my son and pretend like you didn't wreck me? You wanna just go from nothing to…to…everything in one night? I mean…what the fuck, Elliot? Your stuff is here, your job is here, your kid is here."
"I wanna go home," he said, and as he spoke he began to close the distance between them. They had been too far apart for too long, and he wanted her to see his eyes when he told her this, when he told her the truth, when he made his last confession. "Every minute of the last ten years I've felt homeless. I've been running, and I wanna stop. I'll figure it out. The job and the stuff and where I'm gonna live." The private security work had paid him very well, and he wasn't hurting for cash right now, he could make it, for a little while, without a job. "Kathy likes it here but she's tired of being so far away from the rest of our kids. She's gonna go home, too, and she'll take Eli with her and we'll figure it out. Christ, Liv, just give us the chance to figure it out. Don't you want to figure it out?"
He was right in front of her now, close enough to reach out and touch her, if he dared, close enough to see the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, close enough to see her lower lip tremble, close enough to see the way she swayed towards him, her body asking for him even as her mind tried to pull her back.
"What if it doesn't work?" she asked him breathlessly, miserably. "What if we do all this and you decide I'm not what you want?"
"You're the only thing I've wanted for the last twenty years. I'm never not gonna want you, Olivia."
"But-"
"Does everything have to be a goddamn fight with you?" he grumbled affectionately, reaching out to brush a lock of her damp hair back from her face.
"You're one to talk," she fired back, and he grinned, because she was right. They were fighters, both of them, and they had been fighting - the world, their pasts, each other - for so long now they didn't really seem to know how to stop.
"I don't wanna fight any more," he said. "I want to love you. Just let me."
Her eyes were fixed on his face, dark and huge and so fucking beautiful, those eyes that had haunted his dreams for the last decade, accusing him in his sleep, calling him a betrayer, but she wasn't pushing him away now; she was watching him, now, as if she were afraid of him, of what he might do, of the power he held over her, and he understood that fear, for he felt it himself. He was absolutely fucking terrified, scared shitless by the risk he was taking, the risk he was asking her to take. She was right to wonder if maybe things would go bad between them, if maybe they had changed too much or maybe they wouldn't be compatible without the job to bind them together. She was right to be anxious, and to consider just how wrong things might go, but all he could think was but what if they go right? What if this, her and him, together, was exactly what they'd both been looking for all their lives?
"I don't know if I can."
That was his girl, brittle and wary. She never let anyone get too close, never really let anyone love her, and letting him, that would be harder than anything she'd ever done. Especially now, after so long without him, when she had her son to worry about, when she had made Captain and all eyes were fixed on her and she felt a duty to be good, to do the right thing. Though she had not expressed those concerns to him he knew they would be foremost in her mind, because he knew her, and he knew what mattered to her. He'd always known.
"You don't have to do anything," he assured her, his hand sliding beneath the weight of her hair, settling on the back of her neck, her eyes fluttering closed at the contact. "Let me, Liv. Just let me."
He'd do it all, for her. He'd love her, protect her, worship her, and he'd handle all the logistics and he'd prove to her that she could trust him, he'd do it all himself, if she'd would only just open her arms, and let him.
"Ok," she whispered in an unsteady voice.
He smiled, then, the brightest, widest smile he'd smiled since the day he left her, and then he leaned in very slowly, and sank his mouth over hers.
