Happy reading! And I promise there will be a fourth chapter... I know I said three, but well... apparently my thing is cliffhangers... sooo.. don't hate me lol.
Letting the Damn Break
Her mind was reeling.
Elliot Stabler had kissed her.
He had told her he loved her… no… he was in love with her, and when she ran away because she could no long shoulder the weight of them and him and everything they had been… then… he chased after her.
He chased after her.
He didn't just let her run away… he didn't just let her go like all the other times she ran from him and them… no… he chased her, and then… he kissed her.
He kissed her.
And it was…
It was…
She gripped her steering wheel tight trying to make it home in one piece because she could still feel his lips on hers, and it was…
Everything.
She pulled into her parking space and just sat there for a moment.
She needed a moment. A moment to think and clear her mind, but she couldn't seem to do that. Not when his lips had been on hers. Not when his hand had grabbed her bicep and pulled her into the wall of muscle he was and then… then when he was burning her with his lips, and stealing her mind, his other hand had slid into her hair… had caressed her cheek… had tried to wipe her tears away…
She felt a small sob get stuck in her throat.
He had been heat and passion and all the sensual… sexual things she always knew he was but had never experienced and… he was tender. He gently wiped her tears away while his lips claimed her…
Christ.
No, she thought.
Stop it. She couldn't think about how he had done the most endearing and sweetest thing while he was also sparking an inferno inside her body.
No… she can't feel this way again.
She needed her head clear. She needed to think about what all this was, what all this…
What it all could be.
No…. no… she couldn't think like that either. She couldn't let herself think like that. She couldn't afford to think like that. Thinking like that only got her heart broken. It only left her a hollow shell after he walked out on her… but…
Then again… he also told her… he said he wasn't going anywhere…
And he said he loved her…
He… he was in love with her.
She felt her heart swell in her chest and her pulse began to race. Her mind was fighting a war with her body, and it deceived her every thought. The physical attraction she had felt for him, had always felt for him, was warping her mind. Her lips were still burning from his, she could still feel the heat of his hand on her skin, the grip of his other on her arm… the way it clung to her like if he let her go, she might… disappear.
She could still feel the hard solid wall of muscle that was his chest pressed so intimately into hers and the way her nipples hardened feeling the heat of him through his clothes… the way his hips were a mere inch from hers… she could still feel the way he surrounded her and blinded all of her senses from anything but him.
She was aching… physically aching to drive back to that bar and kiss him back. Grab him and… and burn him too.
But her mind was telling her to cool it. Her mind was telling her to calm down, just breath. Her mind was telling her… don't believe him.
Don't believe his words… don't believe his actions.
He was being impulsive. All the time between them… it was just lack of impulse control.
Don't believe…
He left you once. He could again. And then what…
It was a storm she could simply not weather again. It wasn't even a question.
Her breathing started to slow, and her pulse came back down. She let go of the steering wheel and turned her car off and sat back in her seat.
Then the flash of his face flooded her mind. The deep pools of blue she had spent the better part of twelve years falling into and a decade being haunted by…
The way they were looking at her in the bar… it was the same way they had always looked at her, and yet there was more there she'd never seen.
Then on the street… in that second those words left her mouth…
The pain. She saw his pain. The pain of his soul reflecting there in his eyes … from her walking away from him at the bar… from her walking away from him after he kissed her… the pain of him thinking… thinking she didn't feel the same way…
That it wouldn't ever happen between them…
That she didn't want him…
That she didn't spend ten years falling asleep to the echo of his voice saying her name…
That she didn't love him…
That she wasn't… in love with him…
And it couldn't be farther from the truth.
"What did I do…" she whispered to herself.
Then the damn broke, and she sat in her car and sobbed.
EOEOEOEOEOEOEOEO
Elliot took a deep breath in and let it out slow. Somehow, he walked back into the bar and grabbed a seat at the end before his legs gave out.
The bartender must have been watching them because before he knew it, the same kind of beer he had at their table was sitting in front of him.
"Figured you might need this…" he said, and Elliot looked at up him, his eyes blurred from the tears on the verge of falling and nodded his thanks. The bartender mirrored his motion and went back to serving other customers.
Elliot gripped the glass as the salt water finally welled over and down his cheeks. He quickly wiped them away and took a long drink.
He sat there replaying the events of the night over and over again.
He was clear.
He spoke his truth.
He let his actions show what he was saying was true.
And she ran.
He felt like he had just been beaten to a pulp and he wished he had. He could deal with the physical pain… address cuts and bruises… wash away the blood… he knew how to heal the physical.
But this…
He knew she wouldn't just fall into his arms, and he loved that about her. He was more than ready to put in the work. He kinda liked stubborn Liv… liked the give and take.
He didn't want some woman who would just agree with him all the time, be a good little wife… no there were tons of those out there, if he wanted that… he could have had that already.
No, he wanted the good and the bad. He wanted the fights and the making up… he wanted to be challenged and inspired. He wanted a woman who could meet him toe to toe and stand her ground and make her own decisions… who had her own opinions and goals. A woman who understood him and this job… and equal… a partner...
All he's ever truly wanted was Olivia.
And this pain… the unseen pain… the pain he didn't know how to fix… the pain of knowing she may never say yes to him… to trying… he wasn't sure he could handle it.
He knew this wasn't going to be easy.
He took another deep breath and sipped at his beer.
But she didn't pull back from him when he grabbed her. She didn't tense up and rip her lips away from him… she didn't shout or scream at him…
She let him kiss her.
The pain he felt after she whispered those words to him was so debilitating it drowned the feelings he had felt in the seconds before his world was turned upside down.
There was heat. He felt her body reacting to his, it was subtle, but it was there. He could feel her wanting more. The electricity they had always had between them… it was there. He had barely tasted her lips and the second she pulled back he ached for more. He needed more…
She let him kiss her…
This wasn't over.
It couldn't be over. He'd made so many mistakes in the past and this was just the first step. He could do this. He could handle the pain. He'd have to.
He had left her… just… disappeared… for ten years… and she somehow, being the compassionate, kind, fiercely loyal person she was, allowed him back into her life… if she could do that… then he could shoulder this.
He wasn't going to give up this fight.
He was ready to fight for her.
He started to feel the spark of hope he had felt just a few hours ago come back. He sat up straight and took a last sip of beer and threw money down on the bar and walked out.
He wanted to drive himself over to her apartment, to show her he meant everything he said, to show her he wasn't leaving her… ever again, but he felt like maybe he should just give her a little time. Not too much, because he had plans.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he had plans.
This wasn't over.
EOEOEOEOEOEOEOEO
Olivia had somehow managed to make it up to her apartment and for the first few minutes she fell back into the instant routine of getting home. Taking her shoes off, setting her bag down, sheading her coat because she had just sobbed in her car for twenty minutes.
She needed to feel something familiar… she needed to feel normal even for a few seconds because the amount of emotions rushing her mind and body were threatening to cripple her. But when she turned and faced her empty living room… the silence swallowed her.
Noah had always been her light, her sweet, sweet boy who had saved her just as much as she saved him. And on days where the silence threatened to swallow her whole, on days when the ache she felt for the partner she thought she had lost forever was especially terrible, his smiling face was the best distraction.
But her sweet boy was away for the weekend.
It was just her and the silence.
Normally she'd relish in a few hours of silence, no phone, no sirens… she'd draw herself a bath if she had the time and just enjoy the heat and the scent… but now the only thing she could think about was his heat.
It took her breath away just how much he had changed the game. She leaned back against her door and let herself slide down to the floor. She sat there and put her head in her hands.
There was no going back from this. There was no going back to the Olivia who didn't know what it felt like to have his lips on hers… the Olivia who only ever caught glimpses of heat in her partner's eyes before he looked away… the Olivia who wondered what it would be like to hear those words leave his mouth. She was that Olivia now. And she could be… more.
She could be the Olivia that knew what it was to let him love her. She could be the Olivia that didn't have to fantasize about him touching her, kissing her… making love to her because she'd know… she could be the Olivia that didn't need a parallel universe where it was always him and her because they were in this universe… in every universe… together.
She was scared.
Scared as hell. Her therapist had told her she needed to either explore her feelings for him, let herself feel them, or move on.
She hadn't been ready for either. But Elliot changed the game. And now she was afraid she ruined all of that. She ran, and she shouldn't have.
She did love him.
She was in love with him. She has been in love with him for… forever.
And now that she was this Olivia who had let her partner kiss her on the street in front of a bar, she wanted to be all the Olivia's with him.
It didn't matter if she was ready or not because… it had always been him.
She wanted to be his Olivia.
Suddenly she felt a huge swell of emotion and adrenaline and heat flood her body and her mind and she felt… free.
It was the first step. She had never let herself love him… she had never even said out lout to herself that she loved him… that she was in love with him… because… it was too hard. She couldn't take it back… and now… she couldn't bear the thought of him taking it back.
Goddammit…
She pulled herself up off the floor and felt her skin start to tingle. Her breathing picked up again as her mind started to spiral.
"I love him…" she whispered to herself.
"I love him…" she said again and this time her voice was a little clearer… a little louder and she felt all the weight and all the years and all their complicated bullshit just… lift off her shoulders.
She brought her hand over her mouth and couldn't stop the laugh bubbling up inside her.
This could be the biggest mistake she had ever made, running from him this time… running from him when he had been his most vulnerable with her, but this would be the last time. This time she was going to run to him. She was going to show him.
Had she known finally saying her truth out loud even just to herself would not only break the fucking damn she built to keep her feelings under control but set her absolutely free… she would have done this years ago.
She would have done it ten years ago.
She would have done it thirteen years ago after the train station, after the warehouse… sitting in that hospital hallway… she would have done it then. She should have done it then.
But she had been scared. So had he.
But not anymore.
She had to fix this.
No more thinking… all she ever did was think about what to do… what to say… what not to say… what not to think… what not to feel…
Not anymore.
She wanted to feel everything… she wanted to feel everything with him.
And before she knew what was happening, her shoes were on, and she was grabbing her coat and out the door.
EOEOEOEOEOEOEOEO
Elliot had just finished changing his sheets and making his bed from the other night when Tia had slept in them.
It was crazy… he had felt something for Tia but the second he finally told Liv how he really felt about her… there were no other women.
No one else existed but her.
Every feeling he ever had about any other woman, with only one exception, were gone.
He was completely one hundred percent hers.
And after he got home and started cleaning up his apartment, he began to run plans through his mind of what he wanted to do. Of all the ways he'd show her he was here… here for her and not going anywhere… of how much he loved her and was in love with her and wanted her…
God, he wanted her.
Just as he was going through the ideas that were starting to swirl in his mind about the how's and when's and where's he was going to continue to show her and remind her that everything they ever had was real and true and he'd spend the rest of his life making up for the time they lost… someone knocked on his door.
He grumbled a little to himself, annoyed that someone was interrupting his planning and headed to the door.
He sighed and pulled the door open and, in an instant, felt all the breath leave his body.
The very last person he ever expected to see was the only person he ever wanted to see for the rest of his life.
Olivia Benson was standing at his door; her beautiful brown eyes were shining and full of light and maybe a little fear but the smile that was pulling at her lips told him… it was the good kind of fear.
The kind of fear that you know means something amazing is about to happen. Because nothing in the world scared him more than Olivia Benson… except living in a world without her.
Both of them stood there for a second, swept up in each other, and before they knew it, their breathing had synced.
He couldn't believe she was standing here… at his door… looking at him like she was. He couldn't take the threshold she was keeping them on anymore… he had to break the silence.
"Liv…" he rasped.
"I love you…" she whispered as her smile widened and tears rolled down her face.