Chapter 13

Olivia's Chinese food was off. Really off. Odd, she thought, considering that they basically lived off of the stuff during long cases and it hadn't ever tasted old or bad. She put her carton back down on her desk and stared at the tempting picture in front of her.

Elliot. Or, to be more precise, Elliot's half eaten cartons of food spread out among the papers he was frantically filling out, copying her neat notes onto his own DD5 sheets. Apparently he was so far behind he hadn't even been able to recall the order or numbers of most of the cases. Good thing she always kept extra copies of each case file from the last ninety days in her bottom desk drawers, she thought a bit resignedly. Otherwise she was pretty sure Casey would through Elliot's ass in jail for some trumped up charge until he finished his five's and gave them too her.

Yep, she thought, saving him from jail (and Casey, which was probably the worse of the two) definitely qualified her to snag some of his dinner. She reached across the desk, picked up one of the cartons, and slid back to her own side. Not bothering to take out his fork and use her own, she shoved a mound of Lo Mein and rice into her mouth, relieved that his tasted fine.

Elliot made no comment about her purloining his food. He didn't really have any right to, but still, she rather wished he would say something. Anything, really. When she had strode back into the precinct hours ago and saw him sitting at his desk, it had been both relieving and a bit surreal. All she had really wanted to do was sit in her desk, do her work, and glance across at his a couple of times to ensure that he was still around somewhere. Instead, she had seen him sitting there much as he did everyday. A person couldn't ask for a better confirmation than that.

But now that she had seen him, had gleaned the confirmation she had so desperately needed, she felt a bit guilty about not encouraging him to get home. After all, they were both supposed to be back in less than eight hours. She would get a night of solid sleep up in the crib, but he would surely be woken up at least once by the baby and really should head home to get all the sleep he needed.

The truth was, she didn't want him to leave. She wanted to sit across from him, hearing him curse his paperwork, pen, computer, her small writing, anything just to get him sounding like himself again. The new, thoughtful Elliot that had emerged over the last day was a welcome reprieve from the brooding intensity (that was, as Melinda had once said, "Just annoying") that had preceded it but it was also damn odd. The fact that he seemed to be constantly thinking about something and not letting her in on it was unbalancing. He kept looking at her as though he was trying to see something else, and though it was a vast improvement over the "grew an extra head look" of the afternoon, this new look was still strange.

Not able to any longer squelch her conscience and its repetitive remonstrances, Olivia looked up at him and said "El, go home. I can finish these up"

He didn't even look up at her but replied "Olivia, you shouldn't have to do my paperwork for me."

"It's just copying, you only have two left. Besides, I'm going to have to reorganize mine anyways. It'll be easy to put yours in order at the same time." She batted back.

He looked up at her again, with that same weird look on his face. "Liv," he said, " You need to go home and sleep as much as I do."

"No, I don't" she kept on arguing. " You have a new baby that's going to keep you up half the night. I can do these, go to sleep, and still catch more rest than you."

"You're right. I should get back home. But don't finish the papers; I'll do it tomorrow at some point" he said. If she didn't know him better, and know that even with all the crap going on at home he would still prefer to be there, she'd have thought he looked disappointed.

"I'll just pick the stuff up before I leave" she said, not wanting him to know that she was going to do the papers anyways and sleep in the crib. "Night El."

"Goodnight Liv" he said, shooting her one last look as he headed out of the room and down the hall.

Olivia went over to his desk and sat in it, not at all feeling like trying to transport the papers spread all over it to her side. She scribbled the last two DD-5's and organized both her and Elliot's papers so that they were in order by closing date. She put his in a big accordion folder before getting up and moving around the desk to pull out her bottom drawer and re-file her copies.

At last starting to feel tired, she grabbed the empty Chinese cartons off of the desk. She couldn't really remember which had been her stuff and which had been his; it had gotten all jumbled up at some point during the night. It didn't really matter, since it was all going in the trash anyways-neither of them was going to want the other's leftovers come morning. She dumped it into the empty trashcan nearest to the hallway (otherwise the smell would permeate the bullpen, and while Chinese food smelled great at eleven at night, it would not smell nearly as good when seven am rolled around) observing once again how jumbled up it had become. Her last coherent thought before she climbed the stairs to the cribs was that no matter how funky hers had tasted, mixed with his it probably would have been ok.