Part Two
He'd been there before, he knew, on that same phone call, silently begging for mercy for breaking a promise, quietly praying that the voice on the other end wouldn't remind him that he'd broken that same promise three times that week already. Except that he'd always been on the other side, the one making the call, the one whose physical exhaustion showed through in a voice that almost sounded irritated. But unlike the perpetual anger Kathy had always voiced at him, Elliot knew all too well that he wasn't being put off for any reason other than the damned job.
She'd broken their dinner plans three times straight, calling him each night sounding as though she was half asleep on the phone. He could picture her, grabbing a quiet fifteen minute nap in the crib, cutting it to only ten minutes of rest due to a call she felt she owed him.
He knew. He understood. So he didn't give her any shit. He'd rescheduled three times, the last time mutely accepting the suggestion that she'd call to reschedule when she had time. It was hardly the first time and he knew it wouldn't be the last.
And, for some reason, as he kicked his feet up on his coffee table and sat back with a beer to watch the news after a long day where his most pressing issue was whether or not to jog, he envied her. Not the lack of sleep or the fresh horrors or the pressure of solving a case, but something else. The pride, the self worth, something. Perhaps the simple level of fatigue where he could lie down and fall asleep instantly, too tired for memories or nightmares or even regrets.
And in all honesty, he was hardly prepared for the loneliness.
Maybe had he still been married, it wouldn't have been so bad. There would have always been a child in the house, sometimes more than one, sometimes another grown up.
He was wondering if he could count the lovely redhead on channel seven as an acquaintance since he saw her five times a week. And as he sat there, trying to relish the ability to drink a beer without fearing being recalled to the office, Cindy, his standing auburn-haired dinner date, began telling him about the news.
A moment later, a rather haggard looking Captain Cragen was on the screen, flanked by Olivia and Fin who both appeared dead on their feet, pleading with the public for information on a series of young, innocent girls and a greasy looking guy whose face was a series of blurred dots from a surveillance camera enlargement. Cindy cut into the recording from earlier that day, adding her own personalized plea and repeating the Special Victims Hotline number.
It could have been one of a million cases he'd worked, ones they worked together, and he prayed it would end well. But it unnerved him, reminded him of things he'd rather forget, and so he broke up with Cindy, for the evening at least, and turned the channel to watch the exploits of some famous starlets gone astray, pretty young women who thought pedophiles were something they used on their feet.
As the hours crept past, Elliot's mind kept returning to Olivia, to the case, and he knew, as sure as he knew the sun would rise, that she was working herself too hard. He might have been the one retired, but she wasn't getting any younger either. By the time Cindy's cohorts, the eleven o'clock anchors, appeared, Elliot gave up resisting and dialed Olivia's work line, figuring she'd be glued there, waiting for something that would solve the case.
Munch's cranky voice picked up the line, giving the impression that he was probably manning the hotline by himself and had been for some time. It made Elliot smile, understanding why Munch, who'd retired more times than anyone knew, couldn't walk away no matter how many times he tried. But rather than a series of half-serious barbs, Munch only informed him that the place was a mad house, especially since the captain had just sent Fin and Olivia home for the night after Olivia had nearly fainted in the middle of the bullpen.
Elliot was worried, not about why Olivia was fainting, but rather, if she would make it home conscious. He'd seen it before during tough cases. Olivia would get so wrapped up in them, identify so strongly with the victim, that she wouldn't eat. Not for days. Luckily, as her partner, he'd been able to stick food in front of her that would keep her going. Most of the time. He'd seen her stagger more than once, practically dropping into his arms from low blood sugar.
Filled with purpose, Elliot sprang into action, managing to arrive at her door with a bag full of Italian takeout before Olivia even made it home. He stood there, the scent of garlic bread making his mouth water, praying she'd come straight home. He started to panic, wondering if maybe there was another reason she'd canceled their plans, thinking that maybe she had someone else, someone special, in whose arms she planned to snuggle that night.
He'd promised her that he would still be around.
But she hadn't promised him shit.
He was just about to leave in embarrassment when he heard footsteps, more like shuffles, coming down the hall. He looked up, relieved and scared at the same time, watching as his strong, tough partner tripped over her own feet and used the wall as a crutch.
She came to a dead stop halfway between the elevator and her door, her heavy, dark-ringed eyes meeting his. She blinked, squinted, and then dared to lift her hand from the wall long enough to rub both of her eyes.
And then, slowly, a smile spread across her face.
"El?" She shuffled forward another step, yawning without bothering to cover her mouth. "Are you really here?"
He grinned, leaving the food sitting on the floor and making his way to her side. "I saw the news conference. Thought you might not have eaten for a few days."
As he reached her side, she did something she'd never done in all the years they'd known each other. She reached for him, stretching her arms around his neck, sinking into his arms like her legs had finally given out. He accepted the embrace gratefully, always tempted whenever he saw her to do the same thing, always afraid she wouldn't be so welcoming. His face turned into her hair, inhaling the sweet smell that was her, missing her more than he thought possible even though she was right there, in his arms for once.
Her head dropped onto his shoulder, turning toward him like they were dancing. "I miss you."
She was too tired to guard her words, he realized, and although he would have been more than happy to know what she'd confess when she wasn't awake enough to know she wasn't dreaming, he had no desire to violate her privacy. He only wanted to hear what she wanted to give him.
And so he kept her close, guiding her to her door, supporting most of her weight.
It only took a bit of encouragement from him to get a couple bites of food into her mouth and then, her body started to perk up. She woke up, some of her exhaustion having resulted from simply starving herself, and her mood picked up as well. Her face brightened as they spoke, a wide smile peeking through when he regaled her with some of Eli's finest exploits of the previous month since the last time he'd updated her. She rarely smiled like that, in fact, he knew he'd never seen it in all the time they'd worked together, and although he'd been lucky enough to see it a few times in the months since his retirement, it always took his breath away.
Unaware of the cause, but realizing she was the reason for his stare, Olivia ducked her head, a precious, adorable blush sweeping through her cheeks. It was truly amazing to him, to see her behave so differently. After nearly fifteen years of partnership, he'd thought he knew every single thing about her. And those bits of her he hadn't seen, well, he suspected he never would. But still, she continued to amaze him, opening herself up so easily it seemed, so completely. Gone was her slightly-distant, unapproachable persona that had mostly comprised his partner. Gone too was the broken, inconsolable shell of a person she'd sometimes revealed to him when times were especially tough.
Instead, he saw her as a woman. A real woman. A woman who only kept things from him to keep him interested. Maybe she'd changed.
But he suspected that the change had been in him.
Because she'd always been there, waiting for him to notice, standing at his side, so close that he never saw her.
Because he'd always known, not quite consciously, that he'd loved her all along.
Because he'd realized, just before it occurred to him to retire, that he wanted to be more than her work partner. He wanted to be her everything. Just like she was his.
She motioned at the food littering her table. "Thank you so much for this, El. I can't even tell you how hungry I was."
He grinned and shrugged, trying to make her think it didn't mean the world to him that she appreciated it. "I kind of got the idea when you almost fell over in the hall." Her blush returned and he kept teasing. "And I heard you tried the same thing at work."
Embarrassed as she was at her weakness, her eyes latched onto his, her mouth falling open. "Are you stalking me now?"
He chuckled, though the idea had occurred to him during his first days of retirement, if only to keep her safe and to keep him from dying of boredom. "I tried to call to see if you wanted me to bring something by. You should probably tell Munch when you need him to keep something secret."
"Or maybe I should thank him for prompting you to bring me food."
"Want me to beat Fin up for not being a good partner and feeding you?" He knew she'd never reveal any shortcomings of her partner to him and that it wasn't his place any longer to protect her, not that it ever really had been, but he wasn't about to make it easy for her to cut him out.
She shook her head. "It's not his responsibility to feed me." She yawned and stood up. "Want to watch TV or something?"
He nodded eagerly, feeling no need to mention that he already watched far too much television on any given day. He'd do anything if it meant staying close to her. Even if he knew it would probably be better for her to try to get some sleep while she could.
Within minutes, she was yawning more frequently and her eyes were spending more time closed than open. He knew it was time for him to leave, to let her relax, but he just couldn't drag himself to the door. Despite the fact that they did, on occasion, find time to be together, it wasn't nearly as much time as they'd spent together for years, and it simply wasn't enough time. Period.
Her head dropped onto his shoulder, making him think that she'd already drifted off, but she spoke a moment later with words that warmed his heart. "Thank you for being so understanding, El. About me canceling on you all the time."
He probably understood better than anyone ever would, but he didn't bother to say it. Besides, she knew that too. So he turned to her and pressed a kiss onto the top of her head. "I promised, Liv." She nodded and he said nothing else, letting her find what rest he could give her.
He switched off the TV and tried to be as still as he could. Truth was, he was sure, she was dead to the world after going without sleep for days. But as she slept, she seemed to be aware of his presence, her movements coming without the censorship of logic. She turned sideways, pulling her feet up and leaning her knees across his lap. A few minutes later, her hands reached out, curling around his arm and wrapping it tightly in her arms. With his arm locked tight in her grasp, his own movement was limited, and his hand came to rest on top of her leg, lightly squeezing her to let her know he was still there.
And though he knew it was long past time to go, he couldn't bring himself to move. Nor could he disturb the beauty that was his partner, always his partner, no matter what, when she was relaxed and peaceful in sleep.
But he felt like a coward, like he had in the hallway, stealing something from her that she was too tired to hide. So he reluctantly shook her leg a bit, saying her name softly, trying to rouse her without scaring her.
She groaned something that sounded like an attempt at a word, telling him that she was semi-conscious.
"Come on, Liv, bed time."
She shook her head against his arm, her hold tightening from where it had loosened in sleep. "Already sleep."
He grinned, toying with the idea of arguing the point that she obviously wasn't asleep if she was talking to him. Instead, he tried again, shaking her leg a bit harder, trying to get her to come a bit more awake. "Liv, you should go to your bed. You're going to be in all sorts of pain if you sleep like this." She was twisted up like a pretzel, clinging to him in her sleep, which he reasoned, might be damaging to her psyche if not to her joints.
One of her arms released its grip on his, snaking around his stomach, clutching his shirt. Her face burrowed into the folds of his shirt at his shoulder. "I'm too comfy. Don't make me get up."
That was all the excuse he needed. So he let his head fall back and closed his eyes, trying to remember a moment when he'd felt such contentment.
Three hours was all they got before the incessant, torturous beeping that was Olivia's cell phone woke them. Ostensibly, Elliot understood the need for such an irritating sound, as he'd slept through enough phone calls in his time to know that something had to be truly obnoxious to wake someone who was seriously sleep deprived. Still, he was tempted to throw the damn thing out the window.
But he couldn't, because as far as he could tell, the phone was somewhere on her person, and he wasn't about to go patting her down for it. Because that would, invariably, lead to no end of trouble.
After a minute, Olivia's unintelligible mutter indicated that she was aware of the noise. Another minute and she removed her hand from Elliot's stomach to dig into her pocket.
"What?"
He could hear a muffled voice on the other end, probably pleading for mercy from his partner.
"Fine. I'll meet you there."
She put the phone back in her pocket, tightened her hold on Elliot's arm, and dropped her face back into his shirt, muttering several hundred four-letter words regarding Fin, his mother, and various other ancestors.
Elliot laughed, thankful, for once, to be free of the misery that was being woken from a perfectly good nearly comatose sleep and dragged back into work. And having been the one to bug Olivia in such a way so very many times, it amused him to hear her colorful response.
He shook her a bit, reminding her that she was supposed to be getting up rather than falling back to sleep. "I hope you never said those things about me."
She lifted her head, blinking sleepily at him. It appeared that she wasn't quite awake and hadn't understood what he was saying, but then she shook her head and smiled. "Actually, I never felt the urge to curse you out for calling me. Not even in the middle of the night." She began to unfold herself, carefully untangling their limbs, and stretching her body like a cat. Then she shrugged at him with a blush staining her cheeks again. "Of course, I don't think I've ever been that comfortable before in my life."
Knowing she was admitting something she wasn't entirely comfortable admitting, he gave her the perfect opportunity to get out of it. "Sleep deprivation will do that to you."
She stood up, with one final stretch of her arms over her head, pulling her shirt up to reveal the skin of her stomach. "I should get going."
Elliot was concentrating on not grabbing onto her and refusing to let her go, the very same way he'd done when he'd left her side that day at the precinct. Finding an internal well of strength somewhere deep inside, he sighed and walked beside her to the door. "I guess that's my cue to leave."
And so they stood just inside her front door, staring at one another. She obviously didn't want to leave anymore than he did, but her responsibilities called her elsewhere. Her phone started to ring again and she unhappily opened it only to hang up immediately. "I might have accidentally fallen back asleep a couple of times on him, so he usually calls half a dozen times to make sure I'm really up."
He grinned, hearing the unspoken confession, the truth that she just didn't have the same rapport with Fin that she'd had with him. "So, I – uh, well, I'll wait a couple of days to hear from you and when I don't, I'll start calling to bug you again."
She laughed, her smile lighting up her face once again before disappearing when she held his eyes for a moment too long. "Seriously, thanks for dinner. And for putting up with me."
He nodded, uncertain how to tell her that she was the one propping him up and keeping him breathing. He reached out instead, pulling her into his embrace once more, squeezing her to him. She returned the pressure, her arms holding him with equal strength.
The feeling of her body against his was such a tease, such a distraction, that he forgot for a moment where they were, what they were doing. He went with the sensation, an instinct that kept the human race proliferating, and his mouth found hers for only the second time.
But unlike the first, when neither of them had been sure what to think, the shift in their relationship was much clearer. His lips were more insistent, his mouth opening without even a thought. Just like the embrace, she returned the kiss, opening her mouth under his, allowing him a taste of what it could be like.
His hands were knotted in her hair, his tongue twisting with hers, his body smashed against hers so tightly that nothing could come between them.
But her phone's shrill ring jolted them away from one another, years of inappropriate thoughts leaving a well of guilt to pour forth. Elliot couldn't believe he'd been so bold, so forward, especially when, in those nerve-wracking seconds of anxiety, he feared he might have misread her desire to maintain their friendship.
He watched as she opened her phone again and bit off a breathy "yeah, I'm coming, fuck off already" before she let out a shaky sigh and looked at him. She seemed genuinely disinclined to move as she nodded toward the door. "I really have to go."
He nodded, already beginning to relive those amazing moments when he'd been kissing her. "Yeah, I know."
She smiled, brushing her hand down his sleeve and against his own for only a moment in a touch so soft, so wistful he knew it would linger for days, if not years. "Good night."
And then she was gone before he was sure any of it had happened.