Getting to know Olivia.
Disclaimer: Don't own, Dick Wolf does.
Switching up our POV, and the timeline. I think it's time to see what Olivia has going on. I'm trying to write as fast as I can, but the more I push through from the beginning of the series, the more I find myself wondering if E/O was ever really going to happen for us. This story explores a lot of that, but I can tell you with certainty that this WILL end in E/O, because my own heart can't take it otherwise.
Again, no Beta so forgive my errors.
Chapter Text
Olivia wakes up, drenched in sweat and she doesn't recognize where she's at. She's panting, about to scream and as her throat starts to close up, she realizes she's sitting in the stupid accent chair in the stupid hotel room. She's pressed it as far away from the door as possible, it's against the wall on the corner, so that she only has to protect herself from one angle if anything happens.
As she controls her breathing and looks out the window. It's summer, and the sun is shining through the curtains, it both annoys and calms her. This is the only way she can sleep now, knowing there is daylight outside, knowing her surroundings are visible as soon as she wakes up.
Sitting on the floor now, and hugging her knees, she thinks back to the last few days and remembers that it's important to keep her feelings in check because she'll eventually have to talk to someone about this, she'll eventually have to pretend to be letting someone in just enough so that she can go back to work, back to normal.
She closes her eyes and thinks back to when she gave her statement, and her stomach turns the knots already there until it's almost physically painful. She remembers looking out into her squad room, wanting so much to be okay. Nick sneaks a quick glance in, but it's not who she's looking for. She remembers the nostalgic urge to see her old squad room, to see Elliot and suddenly she can't breathe. It's a quick panic, and she's back in full Benson mode when she thanks the detective and looks at her captain. She agrees to stay at Brian's because, well if she's honest with herself, because she can't be alone. She can't walk through that room and be the victim, can't move past this right this moment, she can't trust herself to keep the bottle at bay and she can't call Elliot. She. Won't. Call. Elliot.
And now she feels the tears on her face and can't help them as her breathing quickens and she is full on sobbing. This isn't who she is, this isn't who she wants to be. She gets up and grabs a pillow as she puts her face to it while she screams and sobs into it. This is not okay, she is not okay.
A while later, she settles down and washes her face before she grabs her keys and makes her way out of the hotel room. Even though she's staying with Brian, she took the hotel room. She wasn't sure she would need it, but it's become a ritual to come here and let her guard down. It's comforting and so she's not ready to let go. As she steps out into the bright sunny New York streets, she heads to Brains. It's been two weeks and she's already regaining control, she smiles as she slips her sunglasses on.
EOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEO
As Brian holds her on the couch, his hands start to slip, and she can tell by his breathing that he's knocking out. She smiles, closes her eyes and tries to focus on his breathing so that she can get some sleep.
She's dreaming, she knows she is but in this moment she's content with this knowledge as she steps forward and presses her head to his, and she can almost smell him again. She wants to remember his blue eyes as they light up her world, but instead Elliot gives her that hooded look that tells her things are not okay. She wakes up, and it's Brian shifting on the couch, she goes to get up and he pulls her close, nestling his face into her neck. She closes her eyes and tries to remain calm, she wants to be happy or at least content, but she's not and she can't explain why.
As she closes her eyes again, she begins to drift into sleep and finds herself in the same dream. Again, as she presses her forehead to his, she wakes up and this time Brian isn't behind her but in the kitchen, she can hear him grabbing a bottle of water and she reminds herself that she needs to buy a filter, they can't keep consuming this much plastic. She read it in the magazine at the therapist's office, she wants to change her habits. At least, the easier ones she thinks as she smiles to herself. By the time she pulls herself up, Brian is watching her from the doorway.
What? It comes out angrier than she intends, but before she can tell him this, he walks towards the bedroom and as he turns around he says, You say his name, in a whisper that feels like it's more a secret he doesn't want to admit.
This is the exact moment, and she tells herself this, so she can remember it clearly, this is the exact moment she vows to take therapy seriously. She's going to move past this. Suddenly, as she sits in the dark of her new apartment, she wants to move past everything. This isn't just about Elliot, or Lewis, this is about everything in her past that she's let drag her down. She can tell herself that it'll make her stronger, but at the end of the day she knows she's a strong person. Maybe the added weight isn't building her strength anymore, maybe it's actually hindering. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
She gets up from the couch and heads to the bedroom, Brian has his back turned to her and even if he wasn't asleep, he may as well be because they aren't going to talk. She gets under the covers and, as she closes her eyes, she goes to the necklace around her neck, and as she feels the emptiness there, she feels her eyes well up. She can move past this, she can move past everything and everyone.
EOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEOEO
They have a place together, although they found a place they could both afford, she made sure it was a place she could afford without him. Whether he knew it or not, again, Brian let her have it. That's what she finds most upsetting about him, and why she wonders if they will last. He pretends to look the other way on a lot, and she's beginning to wonder if he's really that naive or if he's feigning for her sake. She doesn't know which one upsets her more, but she feels it's the latter and then avoids the subject completely, both externally and internally.
They finally moved everything in, and they settled down. No more boxes around, no more going back. Both names on the lease, for the next six months anyway. She wonders if the building supervisor knew who she was, and she can't help but be annoyed with him as well. Of course, he knew, if it wasn't from her Tour de New York with the department, then it was the newspapers or for all she knows, it was Brian calling ahead. Whatever the situation, the lease had One Year scratched and Six Months in nasty blotchy ink, at least this situation was proving to finally be useful. She couldn't fight everyone who wanted to treat her like a victim, though it didn't stop her the first few weeks. She smiles back now, at every argument that she'd engaged in during her first weeks back. Half of those had no right being called arguments, but it didn't stop her from arguing, even if it was with herself half the time. Now, months later, she can move past most people who she assumes are treating her like a victim, not every food vendor in New York gives her free coffee because she was plastered all over the news, sometimes it's just food stands she's avoided running into during a chase. It was hard to admit, but therapy was actually helping.
She grabs her phone on the way to the bathroom, and she sends the message without really thinking about it. By the time she's fully aware, she's sitting on the toilet and looking down at the screen, little bubbles coming in as he types his reply. She gets up and goes to brush her teeth as a way to buy him more time. She doesn't understand why, Brian isn't home, he still has a few hours of babysitting duty at work before he can come home. She really does hope Tucker comes through for them. She rinses and walks out of the bathroom. She's got nothing to hide anyway, his text thread is fresh in her phone. Their older message were deleted long ago, or well, long enough ago she thinks. The magic of iPhones is that her threads came flooding in when she received a new one, including his. Everything backed up, and that included the things she hadn't been able to part with before. A few weeks after she'd started therapy, and started really letting it get to her, she'd finally deleted his thread. She had kept it to remind herself of why she wouldn't text him, why she couldn't let him get under her skin again. Not that he tried, even after the, she looks down at the phone before she crawls under the covers and shakes her head. She refuses to finish the thought and tries to remember that she's moving past this, past all of her hurt.
I can see your bubbles, that's how iPhones work you know.
I'm up.
She looks at the text, those little black letters in the little grey box and she finds it hard to breathe. Maybe she isn't as ready as she thought, and she turns the screen off. She wants Brian back, and she's mad at herself because she's just replacing one safety blanket, with another. She can do this she thinks, she has to be able to move on from him. She thought she had, when she first started seeing Brian seriously. She thought she was making progress, thought she could finally live without him. And then, she feels the tears welling up in her eyes, and then Lewis happened.
She grabs the pillow and starts to sob into it, she can tell she's having a panic attack and maybe a pillow isn't the safest thing to be slamming her mouth into, but here she is. She's sobbing so uncontrollably hard now, that every time she moves her face from the pillow, she can hear the harsh grasps for air and she wonders how that can possibly be her. She loses track of time, and feels her eyelids grow heavy as her breathing settles down, she's almost asleep when she begins to hiccup and chuckles at the situation. She tries to control the hiccups, and slow down her breathing, she doesn't notice when she finally falls asleep.